You and Me and
by lankypanky
Summary: A divergence point from the game, just after the Lizard/Fugitive chapter.  Norman, Madison, and Ethan duke it out together.  Only major change prior: Ethan's dragged along his gun to the Lizard trial.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Starts with "Fugitive" chapter, takes a left turn . . . yeah, yeah, it's angsty. The whole damn thing. But then . . . so is _Heavy Rain_.

* * *

When the woman on the motorcycle came to a slow stop in front of them, Jayden was already hungry for more small instances of Blake's failures. It wasn't as though they were hard to find, but still.

"Probably lives there," Blake said, dismissing her as she disappeared into the building Ethan Mars was theoretically inside.

_Oh, really? This place looks like its main rent holders are cockroaches and the homeless. "Lives there," my ass._

Restless, Jayden pulled ARI on and ran the plates from the bike. _Paige, Madison. Journalist. Huh. Nope, she sure doesn't live here, possibly because she's not insane_. He cocked his head as he speculated to himself what she might be doing there, what he should say to Blake about her. _Specifically, maybe I should tell him to not shoot her_. The noise in his left ear, of Blake grumbling over the radio, suddenly registered in his head: they were going in.

_The bastard waited until I wasn't paying attention_. He whipped off the ARI, closing his eyes against the blurred vision of his readjusted reality.

"Stay in the car, Jayden," Blake ordered, and the FBI agent decided he'd had enough.

"Fine." _This is not my job, anyway. Let the lunkheads run for it; I'll just get into Mars' head when they bring him back. I'm done running into situations with a guy who doesn't have my back. Done._

The Ford continued to purr, keys in the ignition, while Jayden rubbed his temples. Policemen streamed by him, shouting at each other. _That house is the size of a matchbox, why don't they have Mars out, yet? _He scowled at the pandemonium. It went on forever. Much, much longer than it should have. Something was wrong. He opened the door and dragged himself to his feet.

_Why didn't I demand a headset? I should have demanded a headset_.

"You!" He picked an officer walking by at random, using his very best authoritative voice. "What's going on?"

"What?"_Poor guy looks about sixteen._

"I'm the FBI agent assisting with the case," Jayden snapped. "I'm out of the loop. What just happened?"

"Oh, uh," the cop looked at the crackling radio in his hand; all Jayden could gather out of it at this point were officers rattling off their positions. "Sir, the suspect and an unidentified woman escaped into the subway station behind the building."

"They're still down there?"

"No, sir, they got on a train."

"They escaped on the _subway?_" Jayden exploded. "Jesus _Christ!_" _The captain of the Titanic ran a tighter ship than this. I should've gone. Shouldn't have let Blake get to me_.

"Sir?" The policeman looked startled.

"What tr– oh, here, just give me your damn radio for a minute." The young officer handed it over, numbly. Jayden jabbed his thumb at it.

"This is Special Agent Jayden of the FBI. I need to know which line the suspects are on, bound in which direction, ASAP. Over."

The radio let out an offended-sounding squawk. After a long pause, the words, "Say again, Agent Jayden?" buzzed out of its speaker.

_Jesus Christ on a fucking crutch_. "The suspects boarded a subway train. What train, going in what direction? Over." He knew he was wreaking havoc with their protocol, but couldn't have cared less.

There was a long burst of static, and then some minor squabbling and bits of conversation back and forth. _Just ask one of the passengers down there, you idiots, they'll know_. Jayden folded his arms to keep his temper under control, tucking the radio into his elbow. _Don't lose it in front of junior, here. It's not worth it_. He squinted at the cop's badge. _Kinney. Remember that: Kinney, Kinney, Kinney._

"Agent Jayden," a voice finally buzzed. "That appears to be the eastbound yellow line. I say again, the eastbound yellow line. Do you copy?"

_Bless you, anonymous competent man._ "Affirmative. Over and out." He practically threw the radio back at the wide-eyed cop. "Okay, listen," he continued. "Officer Kinney. I have a job for you."

"I'm supposed to be – "

"No, this is very, very important. If Mars is already gone, anything else can wait. Tell them I threatened you with disciplinary action, I don't give a shit. You see that car? Mars' car? And the motorcycle in front of it?"

Kinney nodded dumbly.

"Your job is to make sure nobody touches them. Nobody searches 'em, nobody moves 'em, nothing. Not until I can come back and get a chance to inspect them. Got it?"

"Why can't you – "

"There's not a lot of time, Officer Kinney, and this might end up being the thing that tips the scales. The evidence in or on those vehicles could lead us to Shaun Mars. Do you understand me? That's why this is your new job until either I get back, or you find someone else to do it."

Kinney looked at the vehicles, then longingly down the street towards his fellow officers, then back at Jayden. "Yes, sir," he said, reluctantly.

"Good. If you need to get in touch with me, Lieutenant Blake has my number." _Of the phone that I will not be answering_. Jayden slid behind the wheel of Blake's Ford, pulled ARI back out of his pocket, and slipped the shades on. "ARI, give me the location of the next subway stop for the Philadelphia eastbound yellow line, relative to the current coordinates." _Not too bad; just a few blocks_. He memorized the directions, flipped the shades on top of his head, and pulled the car out into traffic.

When he came to the stop, he swore – there was a subway exit on each corner, and no free parking spaces. He fumbled in the glove compartment until he found a law enforcement parking notice, tossed it up in the windshield and left the car resting against a solid yellow curb. Slipping back into the glasses and glove was like being welcomed back to life.

Mars' genetic information was already sunk into ARI's recognition system, and Jayden set it to send off warning bells in his brain as soon as it saw any signs of what he was after. Approaching the subway steps, he had to force himself to walk slowly, give ARI time to properly read the environment. _One one thousand, two one thousand_, he spread his hand downwards, delicately, and let the world come bouncing back to him as he started down the stairs. _One one thousand, two one thousand_, he grabbed for evidence as he approached the bottom. Nothing. _One one thousand, two one thousand, _as he began the ascent with a flick of his wrist. _One one thousand, two one thousand_, he came blindly back into the rain, seeing only what his fingers told him, barely dodging the bodies around him on the stairs. No sign of Mars anywhere in this staircase. Three more to go at this intersection.

He moved across the street and started searching the stairs of the next subway exit, hand bobbing beside him. He'd been told it looked like he was idly tossing an invisible yo-yo, the rhythmic grasping of his gloved hand. It felt more like fly fishing, like groping for Braille, like sonar, looking for the sweet spots of meaning amidst chaos. He moved on.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Again.

He'd left the world of unimportant bodies and moved to the one of chemicals and chemistry, only dimly aware that he was clumsily avoiding cars, pedestrians, fireplugs, as he devoured the world with his questing hand, his hungry brain. He came back to the boring world only enough to ask ARI for the next stop on the route and start the car.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Again.

He knew he was using too much of it at a stretch again, that he'd pay for it later. _One one thousand, two one thousand_. Was there any kind of a DNA record for Paige? _One one thousand, two one thousand_. It would be easier if he were looking for two signatures, instead of one. _One one thousand, two one thousand_. A stray hair, a set of greasy fingerprints – they must have left something, somewhere. _One one thousand, two one thousand_. How many stops were there? Were there any dead stations along the line, those strange little ghosts of abandoned stops where the homeless camped and the trains never slowed? He'd have to find out. Wake up. Turn the key. Next stop.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Blood.

Mars' blood. He was bleeding, he'd bled _right here_. Jayden could practically roll it between his palms, he felt it so acutely. The shock of success was such that he had to pause, get his breath, wake himself up from the slow, measured tread of his procedural walk. _All right then, let's get this going. God, how long have I been doing this?_ He didn't want to ask ARI. _A long time. But not too long, because it's working. It's never too long, if it works_. He vaguely sensed pedestrians streaming around him on the sidewalk, giving him the odd curious look, but they seemed supremely unimportant.

Centering himself again, he flashed his palm outwards in an almost lazy gesture, seeking traces that led away from the stairwell. _Show me more. Nobody bleeds just one drop_. _There it is_.

There wasn't much, it wasn't a torrent, but ARI's predatory search found them all. Just enough to lead him on, enough to make him want to run when he had to walk, to chafe at the limitations of ARI's search capability.

_Just follow it, Norman. It's better if you're slow, if you give them time to go to ground._ He forced himself to pause, to breathe. _You're not Superman. Just figure out where they're hiding, then call in. Slowly, slowly._ The erratic trail led him through back streets, dotted itself on cars, tripped its way onto a few walls, disappeared into the back end of nowhere.

Following its last faint traces, he rounded the corner into an alleyway, barely wide enough for a car's passage, that ended in a small asphalt courtyard. Three small radial arms of the same width led off in the other cardinal directions, and as Jayden spread his fingers again, he caught a flicker of Mars' blood glimmering from the one to his left. He entered it, then stopped in confusion.

_Well, hell, this can't be right_. The only door present was made of blank, rusted metal, no handle or knob, looked like a one-way fire exit of some kind, and the passageway dead ended otherwise into a brick wall. The only other features were an open dumpster and a scattering of elderly, leaking trash bags and old boxes. _Good urban design, there_. He bounced ARI at the ground by his feet, and chemical signals blossomed up around him. Only one of them had anything to do with Mars. The others – _ah, I see, all those little shards are from crack vials. That's great._

He flicked his wrist up towards the fire escapes overhead, though they were out of reach, and caught no answering identification. However, they provided some partial cover from the endless rain, and he stepped under one, slicking the water out of his hair while he thought. _Maybe they only stopped here for a minute, and I just didn't see where they went on to_. He clicked his tongue in irritation and headed back out of the alley, almost gone before he heard the fire exit door screech open behind his back. He whirled, startled, unprepared.


	2. Chapter 2

They were both there, staggering together unsteadily as they began to maneuver through the alley. Mars was clinging limply to Paige, his weight nearly pulling her over. As she turned her attention away from her feet and towards the courtyard, her eyes shot to Jayden's face, and her whole body jerked convulsively in response to his presence. As her left arm tightened reflexively around Mars' ribcage, the larger man gasped, sagging lower on his knees. She looked desperately, too slowly, behind her at the swinging door.

The fire exit slammed shut. Jayden was numbly aware that his training had taken over; he was already steadily aiming his gun towards them, braced in both hands. The look on Paige's face made it seem almost unnecessary to identify himself, like an afterthought. _She already knows it's over_. _She knows they're done._

"FBI! Don't move!"

She was frozen, a terrified statue. Mars, wheezing, continued to fumble the black mass of his left hand towards his right ribs, shuddering, the only thing moving in the alley. _Shit, what's he reaching for? _thought Jayden frantically, _ Why can't anyone just go down easy today?_

"I said _don't move!_ _Sir!"_ His gun was pointed straight at Mars now, all his attention focused. "I need you to put your hands –"

"He can't!" shouted Paige, wide-eyed. She was shaking her head, helplessly.

Jayden paused. _What's going on?_ Mars' hand was completely wrapped in something black, it looked like, and not capable of much. He didn't look aggressive, just . . . disoriented. "What's wrong with him?" the agent asked Paige's pleading eyes, tilting his gun muzzle slightly. Mars' black hand grasped back up towards his sagging head.

"He's hurt," said Paige, and shifted the swaying man's weight against her side. "Pretty badly. I don't think he knows what's going on."

"Mars! Ethan Mars!" Jayden snapped. Mars' head lifted towards him, but the eyes were squinting, blind, the look of someone trying to stare into the sun. _I didn't think there was __**that **__much blood on the trail. Shit. Well, this can't be too hard to deal with. At least I think my chances of one of them trying to jump me just got cut in half_.

"Okay," Jayden continued thoughtfully. "Here's what I want you to do, Ms. Paige. You're going to help him get down on the ground, all right? Looks like that's the direction he's headed in, anyway. Get him facedown on the ground, right there on that empty patch."

She began to slowly comply with the order, shuffling the two of them towards a relatively garbage-free square of asphalt, more or less free of chemical traces. Jayden suddenly realized that he was still wearing the ARI glasses, focusing through a haze of identification and overstimuli, snatched them off his face, and quickly worked them back into his breast pocket.

Mars continued, briefly, to stare towards Jayden as though he were trying to puzzle something out. Paige gingerly shifted his arm off her shoulders to get behind him, caught him by the armpits when he wobbled, and leaned slightly backwards as she bent at the knees, lowering him towards the ground. Mars flailed vaguely outward as he sank down with her. "Ethan, Ethan, listen. Just sit down," she urged loudly. Towards Jayden, she added, "This is hard. He's really heavy."

He stared impassively at her over the muzzle of his gun. _The more off-balance you are, the more comfortable I feel, lady._ Awkwardly, she fumbled, abruptly letting Mars drop out of her grasp and onto the pavement, where he tried to catch himself with his outstretched right arm, but instead fell heavily onto his side on the ground, curling up in pain. "Oh, god, I'm sorry, Ethan," she said, staggering a little herself as she bent over his gasping face. "Did you hit your head?"

"Get him facedown, Ms. Paige," repeated Jayden, and she threw him a quick look of fury.

"Ethan, can you answer me? I need your help."

The shivering man moved his face to point vaguely towards her voice; Jayden could just barely make out the words: "I don't . . . I don't think I can . . ."

"Okay, I'm going to roll you over. You've got to get on your stomach." He was shaking his head, but she slipped one hand under his downwards hip and pulled up, her other supporting his chest on the way down. "No, Ethan," she said, as he tried to roll back. "Just stay there."

"What's on his hand? Why does his hand look like that?" Jayden wondered if there were some bizarre, sinister purpose to it. It looked like it was wrapped in black plastic.

"It's a bandage. His hand is bleeding."

He squinted incredulously. _Doesn't look like any bandage I've ever seen, but he does seem to be favoring it pretty heavily; I guess that's the source of the blood trail. I suppose he's not going to suffocate me with it._ "I need his hands behind his head, Ms. Paige." That earned him another angry look.

"I doubt they're going to stay there, _Agent_," she snapped back.

"Do your best." She did, lips pressed disapprovingly shut. Mars tried to jerk away from her touch as she gently pulled up first his right hand to the back of his head, then his muffled left one, clasping them in her own.

"I'm sorry, Ethan," she said. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts."

_Christ, I feel like a real asshole_, thought Jayden. "Okay," he said. "Okay, let go." He had to admit that it looked like she was right; Mars almost immediately curled the left hand protectively back under his shoulder and pulled the right one down, palm upward, to pillow his face against the rough pavement. _Shit, I've only got the one pair of handcuffs. Better save them for her_. Paige was looking challengingly towards Jayden, her face clearly saying, _I told you so_, one hand placed lightly on Mars' upper back to keep him still. The FBI agent hesitated between calling immediately for backup and doing a patdown.

"Does he have any weapons, Ms. Paige?"

"No," she said curtly.

"Oh, you know that for a fact?"

"Yes." _I call bullshit on that, lady, but I think maybe he'll keep for a minute or two_.

"Do you? Have any weapons?"

"Nnno." Jayden, on edge, immediately caught the slight hesitation in her voice. _Oh, I don't like the sound of that. That's it, patdown it is, ladies first_. The situation was far from ideal, but he didn't want to be distracted with his phone before he'd checked her over.

"You sure about that, Ms. Paige? No knives, no mace?"

"I'm sure!" She looked incensed. "I was just – I don't have anything on me! I was thinking!"

"Okay, I'm going to need you to – " He cut himself off, momentarily stumped. The space they were in was not only impossibly small and awkwardly shaped, but littered with flattened cardboard boxes and half-full garbage bags that might contain anything. And then, there was that dumpster in the way. Getting both of his suspects facedown on the ground, in clear patches that were separate from each other but both within his sight . . . it was going to be a geometrical nightmare. "Stand up, please."

She did so, slowly, her hands automatically rising as she watched the gun follow her movements. Mars shifted restlessly as she moved away, but remained down.

"Thank you. Now, please step . . ." he considered thoughtfully, and finally pointed to a relatively clear stretch of wall that Mars' head was pointed towards. "Over there. Both hands on the wall in front of you, legs apart." _I can pretty much keep them both in view from there._ She reluctantly followed his orders. While he watched her, he briefly shifted the gun to his left hand, so that he could roll the ARI glove up and off, stuffing it into the same pocket as the glasses.

When she'd finally posed herself, he moved in behind her, shifting his gun back to his right, dominant hand to check her over. He became aware that both his hands were trembling slightly with adrenaline, and he made himself slow down, be thorough – _this is important, Norman. You don't have anyone but you looking out for you_. He worked cautiously, watching her closely for signs that she was going to make a move. There was no long hair to check, and her pants were so form-fitting that there wasn't room for much. Only searching her jacketed torso gave him any trouble. _Coat must not be as warm as it feels_, he thought, _she's shaking_.

The items he encountered were clearly innocuous – a notebook, a phone, some keys, other small effects. "All right," he said, "hands behind your back." To his surprise, she sidled forwards away from him, nearly into the wall, and pushed her thin wrists back to be handcuffed. He fumbled a little, one-handed, as he clicked them into place, then dipped his phone out of his pocket. _Might as well get some people on the way while I try to secure Mars_. _Ah, damn, do I even know the address?_ _How could I figure that out?_ She spoke, interrupting his thoughts as he backed away.

"Can I sit down now?" Her voice was surprisingly small, broken. _Is she crying?_ He frowned.

"Not just yet, Ms. Paige. Give me one minute, and I'll figure out where I can put – "

"D-drop it." Two bodies jerked in surprise, two dark heads turned towards the man on the ground. Mars, still on his belly as though he were crawling under barbed wire, had awkwardly, silently, propped himself up on his left arm. He was pointing a pistol upwards at Jayden in his violently shaking right hand. "Drop your gun."


	3. Chapter 3

A twisting wire of fear grabbed Jayden at the base of his brain, and he felt it shoot all the way down through his guts to his asshole. _Oh, Christ, I stopped watching, I thought he was too out of it. Where the __**fuck **__did he get that gun? _"I mean it," Mars insisted. Instead, Jayden let his grip relax on the phone to better grasp his own weapon in both hands, and the plastic device clattered to the ground, making all three of them flinch. In his peripheral vision, he could see the handcuffed Paige pushing herself flat to the wall, her chin tucked down and to the right, turning her face towards Mars. _Shoulda called backup first, shoulda called backup. What a clusterfuck_.

"Mars! I'm an FBI agent! Drop your weapon!" Mars stared at him fuzzily. _Oh, shit_. "Mr. Mars! Do you understand me?"

There was a pause, then Mars nodded. "You want to arrest me. Put your gun down."

"I can't do that, Mars. I really can't. You need to drop yours."

"No, you need to let me go. I've got to go get my son. If I have to, I'll shoot you for my son."

Studying the quick flicker of desperation in Mars' eyes, Jayden thought, _Oh, yes, you would. Or, at least, you think you would_. In the dim light of the alley, he couldn't tell if the safety on Mars' gun was still on. Given how badly the suspect's hand was trembling, he sincerely hoped it was. His mind began to crank, frantically, as he fought to control his voice.

"Come on, Mars. Think about it. You know you're not going to get out of here. You're barely holding your head up. Look at your hand. You pull that trigger, you're going to miss me by a mile. You might even hit Ms. Paige, here."

Mars rebalanced his body on his elbows and hips, apparently painfully. "Madison?" he croaked uncertainly.

Paige began turning her whole body to face Mars, using her left shoulder for leverage against the wall. "Ethan – "

"Paige, do _not fucking move!_" Jayden barked, and immediately regretted the level of anxiety his voice had betrayed. Nevertheless, she pressed herself back into the brick wall, silent. _No weapons, my ass. Liars don't get to talk._

He returned to as much of an even tone as he could manage: "If you shoot at me, Mars, I won't have any choice then but to shoot you. And I'm not going to miss. You don't want that. I don't want that. Shape you're in, I might just kill you anywhere I hit."

"You can't kill me," Mars said, "I'm the only one who can save Shaun."

The suspect tried to shove himself upwards to all fours, an unsteady pushup, and Jayden considered rushing him while he was off-balance. But the effort was over almost before it began – Mars' head weaved unsteadily, and he thudded heavily back down into the asphalt, right arm still outstretched. The gun performed a wild dance in Jayden's direction, the butt hitting the ground, and the agent flinched, inadvertently. He could just barely see Paige squeezing herself into the wall next to him, trying to make herself invisible. Unshootable.

_Keep trying to get up, asshole_, Jayden thought frantically. _Make yourself pass out, we're all going to end up a lot happier._ He was trembling with anxiety.

"That's why I want you to come with me, Mr. Mars." _Use his first name, you idiot. Make nice._ "Ethan. So you can help bring Shaun home safely. Come on, I'll take you in, we'll get you to a doctor, you can tell us what we need to do."

"No, no, it has to be me. Just me."

"Why's that, Ethan?"

"I'm his father."

_Oh, shit. Crazylogic. I hate crazylogic. _"Come on, Ms. Paige here is helping you, isn't she? Madison? I can, too. You just need to put down the gun, and we can work something out. Get you in the car. You can come with us when we go get him."

"No."

"Well, can I help you get there? Can you tell me where you're going? Where Shaun is?"

"No."

_Throw me a fucking bone, here. _"Why not, Ethan?"

"I don't know. I don't know where he is." Mars' already-wet face made it difficult to tell, but it sounded as though he'd begun to cry.

_Well, now I have __**no **__idea what we're talking about. It's officially a waiting game, now. Mars has only so long before he wears himself out. Just keep up the patter, Norman_."If you don't know where he is, how are you going to save him, Ethan?"

"The parts. I've got to get all the parts. To get the answer."

"The parts of what, Ethan?" Jayden' hands were shaking even more from the tension. _Jesus, standoffs are a helluva drug._ He eased his finger off the trigger, unsure of his own control.

"Of . . . of me, I think. I . . . the killer . . . there are clues. To where he is. Where Shaun is."

"You're following clues to Shaun?" _Why won't they stop? Why can't I stop my hands?  
_

"I think I left myself clues."

"What do you mean?" _Oh, shit. _He made himself admit what was happening._ It's a waiting game, all right. You need a hit, Norman. You need it bad. You need it __**now**__. If you don't resolve this in about two minutes, you're done. Oh, shit, he said something. Mars said something. Important._ He'd missed the response to his question. He cleared his throat. "I don't understand, Ethan. What . . . what are the clues? Where are they from?"

"I don't always remember. What I'm doing. There's a me that isn't me, that put this all together, that is making me search, that left me the clues. They're all drowning, there."

Mars was making less and less sense, probably losing consciousness. Jayden flinched at the sensation of the sharp stabbing behind his own eyes, the gremlin fingers of pain that were starting to twist his joints.

"Ethan, your wife said you had blackouts. Do you think that's right? Is there someone else in your head that's doing this?"

Silence.

"Ethan, are you sure you don't know where Shaun is?"

"I think maybe I know. I think part of me knows. I've got to . . . try to get to that part to find out. I have to do it. You can't arrest me. He'll die."

_Maybe that's why he didn't fit the profile. I'm not looking for Ethan Mars at all, I'm looking for whoever he's got tucked away in his brain. His Mr. Hyde. Maybe he is – oh, god, I can't think._ Even with both hands holding it, his gun was shaking as badly as Mars'._ I've got no time. Do it, Norman. Do it._

His whole face felt warm, and he knew his nose was running. _No, you idiot, your nose is bleeding. A lot. And you know why. _"I believe you, Ethan. Look, I don't know if what you're saying is true. But I believe that you believe it." His eyes blurred, and his reality faltered for a second. _Where am I? You are in an alley making a deal with a crazy man before you get shot in the face._ "I have a deal for you. If you put down your gun, I won't arrest you. I won't call any officers. I'll help you out of here, help you as much as I can. I promise you that my number one priority is recovering Shaun, alive."

"No," said Mars, shaking his head, "No."

"Listen. Ms. Paige, Madison, she's a witness. She's listening. If this all goes wrong, I've just thrown away everything, my whole life, the whole case. Hell, probably even if it all works out." _Where is Mars? I can't see him any more. He's out there._ "I'm promising you, on my life, on your son's life, that I'm on your side until this is over. All you have to do is put your gun down first."

"Ethan," Paige's voice emerged from the darkness, and Jayden's heart almost stopped. "Ethan, please. Say yes. Do it."

There was an interminable dark pause in the alley, all panting, blood, pain, exhaustion, and Jayden knew he was going to have to squeeze the trigger before he collapsed. It was the only way he had a chance at getting out alive. Trembling, pained, he was working his index finger past the trigger guard when he finally saw motion in his field of vision, was able to once again distinguish Mars from the background.

He had just enough sight left to see Ethan Mars slowly, deliberately lay his gun flat on the ground, withdraw his hand from it, and let his head gently drop back down on the pavement, a man at rest.

Norman Jayden let his nearly-numb arms drop to his sides, gun pointed at the ground, and sagged back against the wall for support.

_You did your best, Norman. It's not great, but it's not a total loss_, Jayden thought to himself, and as his body relaxed, he realized that the strain had been the only thing holding him up. _Okay, the strain and the wall. If I walk over there to pick up that gun, I am going to faint about halfway there_. Paige was saying something about her cuffs, about his face, about Mars, but he couldn't focus enough to understand her_._ _ Got to sit down for at least a minute. Take a hit._ _Maybe it'll be less obvious if I'm doing something else._ He said, to no one in particular, "I'm going to pick up my phone now, okay? I'm going to need it."

Bending down turned out to be a bad idea. The worst idea. He plummeted into darkness.

_Oh, shit_.

He wasn't sure if the last voice that flashed through his head was the woman's, or his own.


	4. Chapter 4

_where did you even_

_get the gun_

_he's hurt_

_get the keys_

_can you get up_

_get the phone_

_what the_

_let's go_

_he's hurt i helped you i'm helping him we need him no we don't yes what's wrong with him i don't know let's go shut up we need to do this wake up wake up  
_

Someone was bothering him, moving him. _Just a few more minutes? No? What the hell is so important?_ Oh, Jesus, someone was _smothering_ him, trying to choke him to death. _Wake up wake up wake up wake up – _

He shook his way into semi-consciousness, coughing, hands clawing wildly at his face. He found another hand there, pressing cloth over his mouth; he crushed its wrist in his fingers, and it was swiftly withdrawn.

"God_dammit_," he heard, as he gasped for air, trying to focus. A woman's voice. He found her face hanging in front of him, then a name hanging in his head. _Madison Paige. She looks pissed._ Pieces flew together in his head: _Mars-the alley-the standoff-the rain-the deal-the gun-the tripto._ He was lying on his side.

Paige's face remained, wary, wet.

"You're still here," he said, wonderingly.

"Damn straight," Paige said. "And you _owe_ me for that. Owe us."

Rough cloth was pressed into his hand. "Here," she said, "Keep this over your nose. It's slowed down, but you were gushing pretty badly."

He squeezed it into place over his face, and made a bid for verticality, his free right hand slipping on the wet ground. _Oh, yeah, definitely still shaky_. He heard her sigh, and then her hands were helping him lurch up into a sitting position. He noticed that her wrists were red and raw, and remembered to be surprised that her cuffs were off.

"Yeah," she said, catching the direction of his gaze, "You owe me for _that_, too."

He coughed in response, and pulled his hand away briefly to check the moisture he'd sprayed onto his wrist. _I'm just going to hope those bloodstains are from the nosebleed. God only knows what's happening inside my skull right now_. He leaned against the wall again, tilting his head back. _Oh, ow. Ow ow ow. _His head, his joints – everything was protesting at being forced into cooperation.

"What," she asked pointedly, "The _hell_ was that?"

"I've . . . got . . . it's all right, it doesn't matter." He managed to identify Mars, who was sitting upright on the ground now, resting back against the dumpster. There was a gun held limply in his lap, again loosely covering Jayden. He looked angry. _I guess nobody's plans are working out today_. Jayden sighed and ran his free hand over his clothing, his belt, starting to take an inventory. His shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and stickily wet – _oh, let it be water, come on water, nope, of course not_. A look down showed him dark runners of blood through the fabric. _Another shirt bites the dust_.

"You guys look like bookends," Paige said darkly, standing to look down at the two of them. They probably did – miserable, blood-stained, sulking. "Right. I've decided that, as the only one who can remain standing up on a consistent basis, I get to be in charge, now. And I've got to tell you, whatever just happened to you, _Agent_, it matters. I'm starting to seriously reevaluate the value of the help of a guy who passes out while holding a loaded gun. No offense, Ethan."

"Where _is_ my gun?" asked Jayden, already knowing he wouldn't like the answer.

"What's wrong with you?" demanded Mars, bluntly, staring hard.

"Look, I get these migraines," he replied reluctantly. He'd practiced the excuse thoroughly in the mirror until he could do it by heart. "I could feel it coming on, but I thought I'd be okay, could make it through the . . . our conversation. Then it just hit me like a freight train. Was like getting stabbed in the brain. I just need a little downtime, my meds, I'll be okay." _That was pretty good, Norman_, he thought to himself, _grace under pressure_. He tried to look as though he still felt like he was getting stabbed in the brain, which wasn't too far from the truth.

"A migraine. You get _migraines_ that make you _bleed_ out of your _face_?" Paige looked vaguely impressed.

"Yeah, they're pretty brutal. My gun?"

"_I've_ got your gun," replied Paige, "And your phone. And your pepper spray. And your handcuffs. And your handcuff _key_, that was a joy to dig around for. And you get them back when I say so."

"My car keys?"

"Same deal."

"My, uh – " He dove his hand hastily into the all-important breast pocket, and felt a shiver of relief. They were all there together – the ARI glasses, the glove, packed in on top of the slumbering tube of triptocaine. _Must not have looked important enough to take, thank god. The tricks of my trade. The tricks of my trips. The truth of my tricks. Jesus, Norman, get it together_. He tried to remember if there was anything else important. "Actually, where's my tie?"

"You're holding that," she said, "On your face."

"Oh, for – " He gave up and pulled his hand away to examine the wadded-up mess it contained.

"Trust me, it was a lost cause anyway," she said. _Jesus, I think she's __**smirking**_**. **"Tell me, is an _agent_ really supposed to be running around with a medical condition that stabs them in the brain in the middle of a standoff?"

"What?" Jayden was taken off-guard.

"We need to get out of here. Soon," Mars contributed, looking surprisingly disinterested in their exchange, more tired than anything. He'd let the end of the gun in his lap drift downwards until it was pointed aimlessly at the ground.

"I know, Ethan, we will. I'm just wondering if our _agent_ friend owes us as much as I think he does. Owes us so much that we can ask him for a few favors."

Jayden had to stare at her for a long beat before he caught her meaning. _Oh shit, she thinks she's got me over a barrel. She thinks she could rat me out so I'd get benched on a medical. If you only __**knew**_**, **_lady_. He wanted to laugh, then to throw up. _If she tried, though, Norman, if they hauled you in, you know what they'd find. Lucky, lucky bitch_. He threw the ruined tie away from him and ground the heel of his hand against his eye, trying to scratch the itch that was inside his pounding head. Paige was looking hard at him.

"My name is Norman Jayden. You can use whatever part of it you'd like, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop with all the just plan 'agent' stuff. It's not necessary, that tone," said Jayden, sadly. "All this isn't necessary, this . . . coercion. I was going to keep up my end of the deal. I _am_ going to. I want Shaun Mars safe as anyone here," he added, glancing towards Mars. "I mean that genuinely. Please. Let me help."

"Madison," said Mars quietly, "I still don't feel so hot." He didn't look it, either. _I can sympathize, pal_.

She'd flushed a little at Jayden's last speech, looking slightly ashamed, and now bent over Mars with concern. "Where's the car? Agent . . . Jayden?"

He put one hand down and started to get to his feet, but she motioned for him to stay put. He could see her working through her options. "Listen, I think I trust you enough to leave you here without handcuffing you to a drainpipe, but I know I don't trust you enough to let you drive a car with me in it right now. If I let either one of you two behind the wheel, we'll end up in the river."

"I bounce back pretty quick, usually," he said truthfully, feeling guilty that there was a _usually_ involved, but she shook her head at him. He had to think for a second; it was hard to remember what direction he'd walked in, following the ARI. "I . . . let's see, I came into this place from the right . . . no, I remember. Block and Wolfe. Corner of Block and Wolfe. It's a black Ford."

"All right," she said, still looking at Mars. "Ethan? Can you stay awake for a little bit until I get back with the car? Just keep your eyes open, okay?" He nodded wearily. "Just concentrate on that."

_I see. You trust me enough not to handcuff me, but you're leaving me with Mr. Crazylogic and his gun, just in case. _

She stood, gave them both a lingering, doubtful look, and ran off into the rain.

There was an awkward silence after she left, the two men avoiding eye contact. Jayden dipped his hand into a puddle, wishing he knew where he'd thrown the tie, and used his wet hand to try to wipe down his face. He looked towards the other man. _All right, Mars, what's holding your crazylogic together? _

"Does my face look better," he asked tentatively, "Or am I just smearing it?"

Mars looked reluctantly up and back at him. "You look more dirty than bloody, now."

"Better than nothing," Jayden shrugged, standing jerkily. His tailbone was slightly numb from pressing into the concrete, his spine ached from grinding into the wall, and he thought he felt a bump on his head from where he'd probably hit the ground, a collection of sore and tender places. Not to mention the bruises he'd gotten from his fight with Korda. _Thank you, sir, may I have another?_ Ethan watched him warily, but left the gun down. "So where'd you find _her_? She Who Must Be Obeyed?"

"It's a long story. She found me, sort of."

"I'm not surprised. How long has she been helping you out?"

"We met yesterday." Mars abruptly gave up on the gun entirely, placing it on the ground, and lowered his face wearily into his right hand.

_Lady works fast. How did she __**find**__ him?_ "That's a pretty short long story. How much does she know about what you're doing?"

The other man was silent.

"Mars? Hey, Mars, what's wrong with _you_?" Jayden moved cautiously toward him, hunkering down. "Ethan? Where are you hurt?" Mars' eyes blinked open, and he leant his head back again, shifting uneasily as Jayden put one hand on his shoulder and peered into his face, squinting. "Is that a head injury? When did you get that? Have you had it looked at?"

"It's all right, it's just a cut. Madison cleaned it. It's from . . . from yesterday. I'm mostly just . . . there's a lot of pain. All over. And I'm. Tired."

"Yeah? What's with the hand?" Up close, Jayden could tell now that it looked like it was wrapped in a scrap of a black plastic garbage bag, tied off around the wrist.

"Hurt it. Lost part of my finger."

_Jesus_. "Can I see? I've got my CPR certification."

". . . what does that have to do with . . . ?"

"Exactly jack and shit, but I never use it, so it made me feel better to mention it and _pretend_ I was using it."

There was no answering smile. _Tough crowd_. But Mars let him gingerly tear apart the black plastic, and Jayden was taken aback at what was revealed: underneath, the hand was wrapped in strips of blood-spotted newspaper, which he began to cautiously peel away. He caught Ethan's quiver and sharp intake of breath as the stump of bone hit the open air. _Holy god, that woman was determined to make a bandage out of __**something**__. She's creative, at least. Way to plan ahead, Norman, now that you're looking at it, what are you going to do about it?_ The hand was curled into a claw, smeared with blood and newsprint.

"That . . . that looks neither comfortable nor clean." He hesitated, then began shucking off his suit jacket. "This won't be, either, but I promise it'll be slightly less disgusting."


	5. Chapter 5

When he'd finished, he felt much better, both ethically and physically. The shakes were long gone, and the need for tripto had returned to being a dull ache, rather than a pressing emergency. Also, he was pretty proud of his work. _There, got it so it'll stay raised and everything._ He was working his way back into the sodden jacket when he heard the car pull up, and then Paige trotting towards them, saying, "Sorry it took so long, but I thought I saw – what are you doing?"

He shrugged, looking up at her. "The shirt was already toast. I think I'll actually be less conspicuous in my undershirt and jacket." The hand was rebundled awkwardly and hanging in the middle of Mars' chest, now swaddled in the thick, white fabric of Jayden's dress shirt, the sleeves buttoned together around his neck to form a sloppy sling.

"Oh god, you just ripped off the newspaper? That must have hurt like hell!" She was all bristling aggression again, "I haven't been able to clean it out yet, and now I'll just have to do it all over again when we get to where it's safe! Look at him, he's already in enough pain without you sticking fingers into his wounds every five minutes!"

"Jesus, lady," he started, and didn't bother to finish. _All right, if I can't win, I can't win_. He had to admit that Mars didn't look much better for it; the man's face was washed out, his eyes closed, his posture bad.

Paige knelt down next to them, and spotted the gun on the ground. She glanced uncertainly at Jayden while she pocketed it.

"Ethan. How are you doing?" Mars shook his head slightly, wincing. "God damn it, _Agent_ Jayden, he's out again now. You couldn't just leave his hand alone?"

"Stop, Madison," Mars muttered, his eyes fluttering their way into the conversation. "Stop yelling. I was resting. He helped. It feels a little better. The paper was – _poking_ into it. The raw parts. Pretty hard."

"Okay," she said, abashed, "Okay, I'm sorry."

_Want to direct a little bit of that apology my way? Doesn't seem likely. _"Did you leave the car open?" She nodded, eyes still on the wounded man. "Mr. Mars, do you think you can stand up?"

As an answer, Mars began to tentatively lean himself forward, swaying. Paige grabbed his arm. "Gonna need some help."

"I figured that part out. Which side do you want, Ms. Paige?" "Some help" turned out to be a slight understatement. They ended up with Mars' good arm wrapped around Jayden's wiry shoulders, while Paige did her best on his left side, gripping him by belt and elbow. Mars blanched as his legs straightened, and Jayden felt him immediately dip, alarmingly. _Oh, man, he's gonna go down again_. "Whoa, there, pal."

"Yeah, one minute," whispered Mars, and gradually steadied.

"Let's go, Ethan," said Paige, her voice ringing with an optimism that Jayden wasn't sure he shared as they shuffled forwards.

They didn't have far to go, though; she'd managed to back the car into the tiny courtyard, though it must have barely fit its narrow mouth. Together, they loaded Mars into the back seat, helping him to lie down without tumbling to the floor. She touched Jayden's arm, lightly, as she closed the back door.

"Was he just like that," she asked, "the whole time I was gone? Just, like, passed out with the gun on the ground?"

"More or less. I don't think he was really unconscious, though it might be better if he had been. He seems pretty wrecked." He wrapped his suit jacket around himself, shivering. "So am I, if it comes to that. What, why, has he been doing that a lot? Because that could be a problem." _Or a solution, depending on how his blackouts work_.

"Yeah, but that's not the reason I asked. Get in, you look frozen." He shrugged and let himself fall into the passenger seat with a grateful sigh. _Oh, god, that cushion feels about a thousand times better on my ass_. He checked his reflection in the sun visor's mirror and made a disapproving face. Most of the blood was gone, some still rimming his nostrils and clinging to his hairline, but Mars had been right – he looked filthy, and bruised. _Exactly the kind of person you don't want to meet in the exact kind of dark alley I was just in_. He adjusted the mirror slightly to show him the back seat; Mars already looked like he was out like a light. Paige worked her way around to the driver's side, fumbling awkwardly in her waistband as she did so.

"Here you go," she said as she entered, "You just earned your gun back." With a final wriggle, she dug it out of her pants and handed it to him across the console.

He quickly accepted it, checking it over. "I, uh. I'm not sure if 'thanks' is appropriate, in these circumstances. But, you know, maybe I won't arrange to have you killed after this is over."

She stared at him, shocked. "You . . . won't . . ."

"Jesus, I'm kidding. Just start the car." He paused, rubbing his face. "Besides, that's the CIA."

She turned the engine over, and the car began to creep its way through the courtyard's harrowing outlet. _Actually, I'm glad she's driving. That's a tricky spot._ Both sighed as it finally eased free.

"Listen," she said as they began to pull into traffic, "I'm sorry I was . . . such a bitch back there. To you."

"Yeah?" he said, cautiously, glancing towards her. _Where is this going?_ Color was rising in her face.

"It just felt so humiliating."

"What, getting caught? If I were you, I'd be proud of that getaway. If you'd been a little luckier, you probably would have made it."

"No, not that. Getting searched."

"Oh. _Oh._" It took a minute for him to even understand what she was talking about. _Did I . . . linger?_ "Just trying to keep myself safe, Ms. Paige. Strictly professional. Believe me, anything more, more _personal_ was the last thing I was thinking about. I just didn't want to end up dead. Picked the wrong one of you to start with, apparently."

"Yeah, I've sort of figured that out by now," she conceded. "But it was really uncomfortable for me, and that's sort of why I went after you."

"All right." _There's a story there, Norman_. However, there didn't seem to be anything else to say, and they rode in silence for a minute, while Jayden tried to filter through the endless questions he wanted to ask.

"So, Ms. Paige," he started awkwardly, "Is _your_ involvement here personal, or professional?" She looked at him, guiltily, then quickly craned her neck all the way around to peer into the back seat, causing the car to swerve slightly. Jayden followed her eyes towards Mars, who was still clearly, limply unconscious. _Ah, I see. I'm not the only one here with something to hide_. "Does he even know what you do?"

She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.

"So which is it?"

"I'm . . . not really sure. Any more. It started as a piece I thought I could write, but now?" She shrugged, helplessly.

"How did you find him in the first place? He told me you've been helping him since yesterday, which would be even before we were looking for him."

She hesitated. "It's a long story."

"So I keep hearing. All right, actually, let me start with something a little more recent. How did you get from Marble Street to that building? I know you made it onto the subway. What then?"

"Oh, god," Madison groaned. "It was _hell_. Oh, it was so bad." She paused, biting her lip, and Jayden could already feel the torrent of words she was building up.

"We only rode the train for, I don't know, one, two stops," she continued. "Just to put a little distance between Marble Street and ourselves. Got off as soon as Ethan could breathe again, he was having trouble breathing. I sort of knew where we were, but I don't know this neighborhood at all, and we just started walking, no plan. I thought maybe we could, I don't know, find a park or something, anything with some cover we could hide behind, out of the rain. But there just _wasn't_ anything. There was nowhere we could stop, and Ethan kept getting weaker and weaker. He was talking, but he wasn't making any sense."

There was a fragile edge in her voice from the memory. Jayden opened his mouth to intervene, then closed it firmly. _Just let her go. She'll give you more._

"So we went into the back alleys. We ended up in that little courtyard thing, and Ethan just couldn't go any farther. I mean, he was trying, but he was so far gone I'm not even sure if he knew he was standing up. I was just about to give up and maybe have us sit down there in the wet, but then that back door was propped open with a board, and I figured, no matter what was in there, at least it was probably dry. It's some sort of apartment building, you know, but mostly all the rooms are abandoned and boarded-up. There was a door cracked open in the hallway, and we just . . ." She shrugged, turning the wheel, ". . . went in, and then Ethan tripped on something, and he went down like a ton of bricks. Out for the count. The room was all full of spray paint and broken glass and trash, and I got him on this old mattress in the corner that had these stains . . ." She shook her head and shuddered.

"Left him there, found some sort of maintenance closet, almost empty." She paused, looking distressed. "I sort of did what I could for him with what was in there. There wasn't any running water or anything. I know how bad it looked, his hand, but he just wouldn't stop bleeding, and I had to do _something,_ and I was afraid to leave him alone for too long."

"That room was – you know, I can't even start to describe the _smell_ in there. But I figured at least no one would find us, and we could sort of hole up for a while. Come up with a plan. I'm not sure how long we were there. Not long. I think maybe I fell asleep for a little bit. Then I heard that metal door bang shut, the one we'd come in, and there was this guy down the hallway yelling that if anyone was there, they'd better get out. I'm not sure what he was – security or some leftover super, or what. I was hoping he'd just go away, but it was like he knew where we were. Came into the room – little old guy – and called us junkies, said unless we got out right away, he was calling the cops. I think he was as scared of us as I was of him – he ran right back out, but he kept yelling.

"I guess Ethan'd gotten just enough rest where I could get him up. Barely, you know, but up, and we came back out into the alley, and I was still trying to wake him up because he was so out of it, and – " she shrugged. "You pretty much know the rest. That's not how you found us, is it? Because the old guy called the cops? I didn't think it took that long to get out of there after he found us."

"No," said Jayden. "I followed you from the subway station."

"What? How?"

"Take too long to explain. Let's just say it's my specialty. One of my specialties."

"Anyway, I guess Ethan eventually managed to wake up out there. I really didn't know he had that gun, by the way."

Jayden barely registered the comment. "What kinds of things was he saying? Ethan? When he wasn't making any sense?"

"God, I don't know. He kept talking about Shaun, and being tired, or Shaun being tired. Something about drowning, I think. He called me by someone else's name once. Grace?"

"That's his wife. Ex-wife."

"I figured."

"Anything else?"

"I don't know," she said again. "I wasn't really listening. I know, it was probably important, but I was just so focused on finding a place to hide. Oh!" She bit her lip, slowing for a stoplight. "You know his finger? The messed-up one?"

"We've met."

"I know for sure he lost it at that house on Marble Street. But, some of the things he said – I think he cut it off himself. On purpose."

He was past surprise. _Clues. A clue where he has to cut off part of his finger. What for? How do the pieces all go together? _Jayden let his eyes close, resting his head back against the seat, rifling the dark filing cabinet of his mind. There were orchids there, and maps upon maps, and folded paper animals, and bloody hands, and rain, and children with their faces rubbed out, erased. Unexpectedly, he came face to face with himself. _How much of this deal is you trying to save Shaun, Norman_, Norman asked, _And how much of this is because you can't wait to see just what it is that Ethan Mars has under the hood?_ He wanted to protest that the accusation wasn't fair, but he couldn't open his mouth, it was gone, erased, and –

"Agent Jayden?"

"Mmph?" _That was unsettling_. He knuckled at his eyes and turned towards the driver's side.

"Are you all right?" Paige looked more curious than anything. "You were sort of . . . moaning. Is it your head?"

"No, sorry. That'll be okay for a little bit, now. I just dozed off for a second. I'm dead tired."

"That's you and me and baby makes three," she said solemnly, and the incongruity of it made him smile.

"You've been hanging out with him for a day, Ms. Paige. Have you, I don't know, seen anything? Heard anything?"

"Like what?"

"You be the judge. Mars seems to think he's responsible for all this, or that he has some sort of other self that's responsible. Have you seen anything that would make you think that's true? Talked to him when he didn't sound like himself?"

"Ethan could never do this to his son," she said, immediately. "Never. Or any kid, I think. He's, well. He's been in a lot of pain since I met him, but he strikes me as someone who's highly sensitive to pain around him, to other people hurting. There's no way." He heard her take a deep breath. "But he's got secrets. If he's not always Ethan . . . I don't know." She didn't sound happy about it. "He's . . . he's very passionate. Maybe he can't stand it, how much pain he feels."

They spent the rest of the ride in silence, each perusing their private miseries.


	6. Chapter 6

"I refuse to believe there is no elevator. That's unreasonable. I am . . . ninety percent certain that is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act."

". . . does the FBI even enforce that?"

"No. No, Ms. Paige, we do not."

"You have no idea what's in it, do you."

"Not the slightest."

They'd reached the hotel – _Really_, thought Jayden, _more of a motel with delusions of grandeur_ – and she'd pointed out the door of the room they needed get Mars to, on the third floor. Both turned again to the backseat and gazed resignedly down at his still body. He didn't seem to be any worse, certainly, but that wasn't saying much.

"I could just carry him," Jayden offered. "Fireman's carry. Might be faster than getting him to make those stairs." _And a better chance that he'll be able to answer questions once we get up there._

"I don't know," Paige responded, shaking her head. "It's the middle of the day. I think we'd be more likely to get the manager after us, or even someone calling the cops, if it was that obvious. He got _himself_ up there last night, when he was about as bad as this. How hard can it be?"

"All right," he sighed. "Let's see how it goes. Worse comes to worst . . . I guess we could leave him here for a little bit, throw a blanket over him. It's not like he's going to die of heatstroke in this weather."

They both exited the car, moving around to the rear, and Jayden kept a step back, standing watch around the parking lot, while Paige opened the door by Mars' head. _You and me and baby makes three, _rang in Jayden's head. Paige was leaning in, shaking Mars gently, speaking in a low voice.

"Hey, Ethan. You've got to get up now. Come on, Ethan. We're back at the hotel. We're at the Cross Road."_ Wake up, kiddo, we're at Grandma's house._ _Time to get your shoes on_.

_That's it, Norman, you are officially losing your goddamned mind._

He was slow to wake, mumbling wordlessly, and Jayden began seriously considering the blanket option. Then Mars' whole body seemed to clench, his eyes squeezing more tightly shut, and he came out with, "Oh, god."

"Ethan? Can I help?" Madison stopped shaking him, and squeezed his elbow.

"Give me a minute. Oh, _ahhhhhhhhhhh_." It was a soft, formless cry of agony. Mars buried his face in his right hand, and took a few pained, shallow breaths. "The hotel?"

"Yeah, we're here," she confirmed. "Got to get out of the car." He grunted acknowledgement, dropped his legs forward off the seat, and let their shifting weight help pull him upright. "Can you get out okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I think I just gotta take it slow." He creaked his way towards the open door and swung his legs out into the rain. Jayden couldn't help but tap his foot impatiently, as he continued to scan the hotel front. It was much too exposed, this whole setup. Too many comings and goings, too many chances to be spotted. And Mars was moving much too slowly.

Still, after he grabbed on to the door frame for support, Mars made it up successfully. His breathing was irregular, jagged, as he hobbled away from the car, hunched over, Paige determinedly gripping his left upper arm to keep him steady – but he was still standing, and in motion. _This just might work_, Jayden let himself hope as he swung the car door shut and fell into step behind them.

It was still painfully slow going. Mars was taking the stairs as though he was unfamiliar with the process – one step, feet together, one step, feet together. But Jayden was willing to forgive a lot, as long as it worked.

They made it to the first landing. Paige was studying the relevant feet involved – her own and Mars' – to make sure they made it up the stairs, and so it was Jayden, trailing behind, who saw Mars start to wilt.

"Paige? Get him. Get him. _Get him get him get him get him__** get him get him –**_" It was visually obvious that Mars could no longer identify his center of gravity, and he was falling awkwardly onto the handrail, clutching it, as Paige tried to keep him up. Half a flight of stairs, and his small store of energy had already disappeared. They still had to make it to the third floor.

_Fuck this_, thought Jayden. _My turn_. He tore up to them, lifting Mars' hand off the balcony and wrapping it around his shoulders again.

"Okay," he said to a startled Paige, "We're gonna frogmarch him. You know how that works?"

She shook her head, bewildered.

"That's okay. All you need to do is keep hold of that arm, lift, and keep up as best you can, okay?"

"What – "

He didn't want to give her time to argue. "Here we go." Grabbing Mars' right forearm in his own right hand, he grabbed the back of the limp man's belt in his left, pulled upwards, and began striding up the stairs.

Paige let out a dismayed squawk, though she kept up her end of the instructions. Jayden was essentially hoisting all of Mars' weight onto his own shoulders, but she hauled along the best she could, lifting, scrambling, panting with the effort.

Mars, for his part, seemed entirely distressed. His feet paddled vaguely at the steps, missing most. At every landing, Jayden and Paige had to reposition themselves, and during those pauses, Mars tried to sink weakly to his knees, pleading, plainly confused.

"Just . . . if I could just sit down . . . where . . ."

_Made the right call there, Norman_. _He's barely making it up the steps __**not**__ walking_.

Finally, they made it to the door, and Jayden stopped, stymied. _Ah, shit_. Mars was again trying to move forwards gamely, despite being manhandled. _I never did frisk him, did I?_

"Ms. Paige," he said. "Please tell me there's a key to this room."

"Oh," she replied. "Oh, yeah, I think it's still in his right pants pocket, I don't know. Can you find it?"

Jayden gritted his teeth, letting go of Mars' right arm to fish around in his pants. Yep, there it was.

"You can't help me," Mars stammered in his ear, disconcertingly. "The police can't help me." He'd managed the key, but the man himself was slipping away. Quickly.

"Ms. Paige, I have to let go. Grab him."

As Jayden lost his grip, Mars plummeted towards the floor, but Paige was quick enough on the uptake to help him hit gradually. She let him slowly down until he was almost entirely laid out on the hotel balcony. Mars looked alarmed, trying to rise, while Paige hauled him back into a sitting position.

Jayden worked the door open and pocketed the key. "Okay," he said, "I'm just going to pick him up, now. I'm done with sneaking." _Only a few feet to go_. He bent at the knees, wrestled Mars' upper torso over his shoulder, and tramped determinedly into the room. It was difficult maneuvering both their bodies through the narrow entryway, but he was _pretty_ sure he hadn't whacked any important parts of Mars' anatomy into the wall.

"Sit him down," Madison said piercingly behind his back, closing the door. "Just sit him down."

He obliged, dropping Mars onto the bed with care. The man looked confused, and vaguely offended, but with Jayden's help, he was still managing to sit up.

"Thank you," said Mars. "I'm all right now." He began to slowly collapse, and Jayden shook him, roughly, causing him to jerk sharply. _Calm down, Norman. He's already wandered away, mentally. You're not going to get him back by beating him up._

"What do you need me to do, Ms. Paige?"

"Just help me get his coat off," she said. "I think I can pretty much do the rest."

"I'm sitting right here," said Mars, with weak indignation. "I can _hear_ you."

"That's good," replied Paige as she climbed on the bed behind him and began to unbutton the makeshift sling. Jayden held Mars up by the armpits. "But I bet you still can't take your coat off. I think we're going to have to get this thing off him entirely to pull his hand through." After a short struggle, it was managed, though as they pulled Mars' arms out, he dissolved into a ragged exhalation of misery.

"Should we, uh," Jayden said uncomfortably, "Just take off his shirt while he's still sitting up? I'm up to my wrists in it here, and it's. Well. It's disgusting." The wounded man's clothing had a coppery blood smell to it, and an odor of burning. "Maybe even," he said, eyeing the dirty hand and its stump of a pinky, "just throw the whole guy in the tub." _Yep, that's what I wanted to do today, wash a serial killer._

"No, please," Mars mumbled, shaking. "There's no time."

"I think I agree with Ethan on this one," said Paige, grimly. "He looks like he's probably about five minutes away from just passing out again, and I'd rather he did it in bed. His coat is the wettest thing on him. He'd better just sleep in everything else. He hasn't got any other clothes to wear, and he's got all those bandages on underneath." They half-helped, half-let Mars settle down onto the mattress, while Jayden wondered, _Bandages?_ Paige climbed down and began to untie Mars' shoes. Jayden, feeling awkward, walked into the bathroom to check out his reflection. He was dismayed, but not surprised, by what the harsh bathroom lights showed him. _Well, hello, Zombie Norman. I remember you from such the aftereffects of such ARI sessions as, "last night" and "this morning."_ The combination of suit and undershirt made him look like a prom king circa 1996. He sighed, washed his face more thoroughly, and tried to smooth his hair. Paige's voice floated after him:

"Can you get the first aid stuff out of the medicine cabinet? Just, I don't know, grab everything."

"Sure," he called back. "All right." He filled his hands, and walked, newly damp, back into the bedroom, where Paige and Mars were having some sort of murmured conversation. He felt briefly anxious – _conspiring against me?_ – but simply placed his handfuls onto the nightstand and hovered awkwardly.

"I don't have the time," Mars was slurring, twisting restlessly. "I've got to find the rest of the clues." He looked like he was struggling against sleep, and losing.

"I've got to fix your hand first. Just hold on." Paige nodded a quick thanks up at Jayden and grabbed the bottle of paracomol, popped it open.

"Where are my shoes?"

"Ethan, can you take some of these?" She felt his forehead, then his cheek, and made a face. "They'll help with the pain, okay?"

"Where's the gun? Give me the gun back." Mars' glittering eyes came fully open, and he grabbed at her hand urgently.

"It's all right, we're safe right now."

"Where is it? I've got to have it!" He insisted, squeezing.

"What? Why?"

"Give it back. I'm going to need it." He was getting agitated, panting a little, and Jayden and Paige exchanged puzzled looks.

"I don't know, Ethan, you seem kind of . . . confused right now. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you by accident."

"Put it in the box, then," he demanded, starting to sit up, "Put it back in the box."

"Okay, I can do that. Consider it done. It'll be there when you wake up."

To Jayden's surprise, she actually drew out the gun from her jacket interior and handed it to the FBI agent, jerking her head towards a shoebox sitting on the room's lonely desk. He shrugged and accepted it, methodically unloading the clip as he moved there. _Wouldn't have been the way I made the call. At least this way he'll have to be awake enough to get the bullets back in before he shoots his face off_. Automatically, he checked the serial number. _Filed off. Of course_. Hissing with irritation, he toppled the lid off the shoebox and stopped, riveted by the box's other contents. A paper shark, a paper rat, both with numbers scrawled on them. _Hello, what are these?_ He dropped the clip in, and picked up the shark curiously.

"_PUT IT BACK!"_ Mars had been watching his progress, half-propped up in the bed, and now he lunged upwards, shouting, wild-eyed, shoving away the startled Paige, who dropped the bottle and nearly overbalanced off the edge of the mattress. Pills sprayed up and across the room. _Holy sweet Jesus, that's pretty good for a guy who couldn't walk a second ago, _thought Jayden, so surprised that his mouth had fallen open, the shark in one hand, the gun in the other. "_LEAVE IT ALONE!_" Mars was half out of bed now.

"Sure, no problem. Sorry, pal. Look, back in the box." He hastily dropped the shark and followed it more carefully with the gun, then dragged the lid back on. Jayden held his hands up, palms out, towards Mars, like a magician demonstrating that he had nothing up his sleeves.

Mars nodded gratefully, his energy rush already fading. "I'm sorry," he apologized softly. "Sorry. It's important." He slumped and nearly tumbled face first to the floor; Madison rushed to catch him.

"Shh, Ethan. It's okay, it's safe. The gun's in there, the origami's in there. Go back to sleep." Her instructions seemed unnecessary; Mars had collapsed limply in her arms, and she laid him back down gently with an air of weary familiarity.


	7. Chapter 7

"That was . . . unexpected," said Jayden. _Was that his darker half? What was that?_ Mars was still shuddering slightly, but appeared to have left reality again.

"Can you get me a wet washcloth?" asked Paige, retrieving the pill bottle.

"Sure," the agent said, wandering to the bathroom as his mind began to race.

"And a glass of water," she called after him; he returned with both, noting that she had partially rolled up one of Mars' sleeves to peer at what looked like a bandage underneath. When he offered, she accepted the washcloth, but nodded towards the nightstand for the water.

"How bad does he look under the sweater?" he asked, dropping into a chair as she began to gently scrub at the grime and crust on Mars' left hand.

She shook her head back at Jayden, frowning: "Hell, you want the list? His inner arms are all torn up, and I think he's probably down a couple pints of blood from that. His knees are pretty bad, too, but I haven't even messed with them. I didn't know how to bandage them so he could still walk. That was probably a mistake, leaving them alone. I think his pants have sort of fused with his scabs, now. There's a big burn down one side of his chest, and he's got a couple of broken ribs underneath it. And, you know, his finger. And his head. I think his fever's pretty bad again now, not sure what that's from. He's running on about three hours' sleep, and I haven't seen him eat since we met. And that's just the stuff I _know_ about. There's probably some horrible thing he hasn't mentioned."

"Wow." Jayden was genuinely stunned. "He's only been on the run from the authorities for a couple of hours. He looked okay when I met him two days ago. Where'd he get all _that_?"

"I'm not . . . really sure," she said thoughtfully. Mars' left arm kept trying to twitch the damaged hand away from her, but she held it gently, firmly, in place. "I think it somehow must be from going after the clues he was talking about. When _I _first met him yesterday, he'd already picked up the ribs and the gash in his head. I followed him when he went out after that, on a hunch, I guess. Didn't really have anything better to do. He disappeared inside – there's an old abandoned power station in town, the Pico power station, and he went there. At least, it's supposed to be abandoned, but when we were there, it was lit up like a Christmas tree. He was gone for a long time. I got tired, decided the whole thing was kind of a bust, and came back here to try to sleep. I found him passed out on the floor of his room, and by then he pretty much looked like this, except for the finger. That's when _I _found the box, when I was patching him up after that. Guess I'm glad he was knocked out for that part. You pretty much know as much as I do, now."

She paused in her narrative – the hand was pinkly clean, the washcloth filthy, and she dropped the latter on the bedspread. "This is going to be the rough part," she said, reaching for the antiseptic. She sopped some onto a cottonball, braced herself, and began cleaning off the finger's bloody stump. Mars came half-awake, yelping in dismay.

"Hold him," she urged Jayden, her voice rising. "Sit him up a little."

The agent scrambled forward, helping Mars to lift himself up off the bed. Paige grabbed the handful of pills she'd placed on the dresser.

"Swallow these, Ethan," she said. He looked vaguely unclear on the concept, but complied as she placed them in his mouth. She reached around Jayden to chase them with the glass of water. "Okay," she said, "Good enough." Without the antiseptic burning directly into his wound, Mars was already gone again, and Jayden lowered him back to the bed.

"Was that really necessary?" asked Jayden. "Wherever he is, I don't think he's feeling much pain."

"I know," said Paige. "But I think maybe it'll help him sleep a little better, and god knows he needs it." She started to wrap the now-clean left hand. Jayden leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his face.

_This might all make sense. Maybe he's done it all to punish himself. A father who thinks he's a bad father, a father who keeps making himself live through the death of his son, over and over. Dead children, over and over. To punish himself. Makes himself see all those dead children, doesn't even know it. Is making himself go through endless pain because he thinks he deserves it. Maybe. I don't know. It doesn't **feel** right, but the story could make sense. Lose a finger, burn yourself, break your body. The price he has to pay for doing what he's done._

He burned with the desire to gather more information. _If it's him, where's the kid?_ "What else can you tell me, Ms. Paige?" She'd just about finished bandaging Mars, and had her palm laid across his left cheek.

"That I'm fucked."

He blinked in surprise.

"That _we're_ fucked, really. Ethan's car, my motorcycle, they're both gone. I don't know how we're going to do anything, now. Guess it doesn't matter too much until he wakes up."

He filed that data under "Miscellaneous."

"All right, but beyond that."

"Nothing, beyond that. I mean, I'm trying to figure out where to go next, but I don't know where that is."

"There's nothing else you can tell me?"

She was silent, pulling the coverlet from the unoccupied side of the bed and drawing it over Mars' body. "I don't think so. I can't think of anything."

"All right. He's going to be out for a while, you think?"

"Oh, _Jesus," _she said. "He'll be lucky if he wakes up this _year_."

"I need to get a shirt, get ready for whatever pops up. Look a little less horrifically unprofessional. I'm going to go."

"Shit," said Paige. "I, ah, _shit_. Take me with you."

"What? Why?"

"I've got to get a ride, somehow," she replied. "I have some stuff I want to check out. Just take me back to my apartment, if you can."

"Okay." He began mentally sorting back through the day's events. _Awake-coffee-APB-Marble Street-ah. Ah, yes._ "Ms. Paige, I may have good news for you. We'll see."

They both rose to their feet, and Paige sauntered to the desk, gesturing for Jayden to follow.

"Here." She started piling items onto the desk. "Handcuffs. Keys. Phone."

He blinked. "Oh. I sort of . . . thought you were going to make me do some sort of elaborate dance to get them all back."

"I thought I was, too. It was stupid and childish and . . . well, I'm just sorry. Also," she looked embarrassed, "I know you need the keys to drive, and I sort of need the ride. Can you drive okay? Do you still have your headache?"

"No," he said, "It's passed. I'll be okay for a little while now. It's really just when . . . you know, it's such a long story. We should just go."

He flipped open the phone to check – _oh. Oh, god, that's beautiful._ The screen was chock full of messages from Blake, and as he scrolled down, they seemed endless. He shook his head, chuckling.

She looked at him curiously. "What is it? Is it good news?"

"Not really, it's just – I sort of stole a detective's car. It's all right, though, he had it coming. Don't worry, I'm sure he hasn't reported it as stolen. He'll probably just punch me into next week, instead. I should probably go pick up my rental, instead of having him after my ass. Christ, he's an asshole. Pardon my French, but _fuck_. I can't believe his parents didn't drown him at birth."

"Is it Carter Blake?"

". . . yes. How the hell would you know that?"

"I'm a reporter. He's pretty much the worst asshole on the planet to try to work with. Sometimes, suspects come out of conversations with him where they have brand new bruises they didn't have going in. He's usually not super stoked about answering questions about that."

_Lady, you might just be my new hero_. "Okay, let's get going. Try not to leave him" - he jabbed his head towards Mars - "on his own more than we have to. We're going to make a little stop by Marble Street on the way, check out that good news. You good to go?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Let's roll."

They were halfway out the front door when he remembered.

"You've still got my pepper spray," he said.

"Yep, I'm keeping the pepper spray."

"I might need - fine, whatever. Keep it. I got bigger fish to fry."

They were on their way down the stairwell that Mars had fallen up. "It's just that I think it'll be useful," she said.

He was barely listening. "It's yours, Ms. Paige."

"Okay, you have seriously got to stop that. Call me Madison. Really. 'Ms. Paige' makes you sound like my boss."

_Yeah, that's kind of intentional. _He realized she was staring at him as they descended the stairs.

"What?" he asked.

"Can I call you, um."

"Oh. Did you forget? I already told you. It's Norman. Use whatever you like."

She seemed nonplussed by the offhandedness of his response. "All right. Norman."

By the time her door slammed shut, his brain was already ten steps ahead.


	8. Chapter 8

_Norman Jayden, admit it. You are fucking amazing._

"I'm about to deliver," he said, "On that good news."

They were back on Marble Street, and Jayden knew he'd chosen well. There they were – Mars' Toyota, Paige's bike, and one lonely patrol car parked across the way. The Toyota wasn't even booted.

"Ms. Paige, get on the floor."

"Call me – "

"Madison, _get on the fucking floor,_" he hissed. Her eyes widened, but she shimmied beneath the dashboard as best she could. He parked half a block behind the vehicles, took a deep breath to brace himself, and opened the door. He looked down into Madison's face. "Okay, just stay out of sight until I come back. Don't move."

"Norman – " she started, but he was already out and slamming the door.

He stalked purposefully down to the patrol car, and rapped his knuckles on the driver's side window, against which he could only see his own reflection. It rolled down, and he exhaled with relief – he was looking into the surprised face of his new favorite babyface cop.

"Damn good job, Officer Kinney," he said. "I've got it from here. I'll check the vehicles over and call them in to be picked up."

"Lieutenant Blake wanted me to have you contact him as soon as you got here," the boy responded, staring at him oddly. "He says – "

"Yeah, I already know what he says," said Jayden. "Just got off the phone with him. Believe me, no matter what he said to you, it was worse for me. I apologize for putting you in that position. But it's over now."

"Sir, are you all right?" Kinney looked genuinely bewildered. "You're . . ."

He gestured vaguely at Jayden, who had a sudden, absolute certainty that he knew exactly what Paige had been trying to say to him: _Norman, you're still not wearing a shirt_. He was standing in the rain in his dress pants, his suit coat, and an untucked undershirt. "Ah. Right," he said aloud, and then ran out of words. The agent and the officer regarded each other with mutual confusion.

"I had an accident," Jayden said, lamely. "Coffee. All the way down. Total mess. I thought I had a fresh shirt in the car, so I took the old one off, and then I was wrong. I'm going to go change as soon as I'm done here. Yeah, I kind of look like an idiot, don't I?" _Might have something to do with me being an idiot_.

Kinney looked doubtful. "You sure you're okay?"

"Officer Kinney . . ." Jayden hesitated. _Go for the gusto, Norman_. "No. No, I'm not okay. There's a little boy out there who's going to drown to death in the next twenty-four hours or so. Tends to weigh on your mind. I'm _not_ okay with that. I'm not okay with living in a world where that's true. If I ever become okay with that world, then I'll think there's actually something wrong with me."

Kinney looked shell-shocked.

"But for right now, Officer Kinney, I just need to try to solve this. Do you understand? I need to try to stop these terrible things that are happening."

The kid managed to close his mouth, then nodded cautiously. "I'm sorry, sir. I understand. I'm . . . I'm so sorry. That that's your job."

_Oh shit he's buying it_. "I just need to work with these vehicles a little bit. I think it will help with the case. You can go. And I'd appreciate it as a personal favor if you didn't mention my appearance."

"I understand, sir," said Kinney, looking soulful. _Oh Christ just go. Please go. Go go go go go go_.

"Thanks, Kinney," he said. "I'm going to put in a good word for you. It would be better if I had a little . . . personal space, here."

"All right, sir. You said you've talked to Lieutenant Blake?"

"Yes, of course." _I will probably set you on fire if you do not leave immediately._

"And you're going to call in the usual evidence team when you're done? You have the information?"

"Absolutely. I just need to conduct my own research before the evidence is contaminated." _Really, you seem like a nice kid, please don't make me hurt you_. "I promise that as soon as I make it back to the station, I will put in a word about your patience and commendable behavior."

"All right," Kinney said. "Good luck, sir." He rolled up his window, and Jayden stepped back while the patrol car pulled away from the curb. He jogged back to his own car.

"Okay, Madison," he said, opening the door. She was still curled up obediently on the floor. "That car is going to be hot as hell, there's no way you can get anywhere in that without getting pulled over. But you can probably make it on the bike. Take it and go."

"Did you know you're not – "

"Figured it out. This is a one-time offer. Take it." She scrambled to her feet and out the door. "Wait, give me your phone number." They traded numbers, hastily.

"I'm going to check out a few things, then go back to the Cross Road," she said. "I'll see you there."

"Okay," he said. "You call me if you get anything new. Anything." They parted, she vaulting onto her bike, he thumping back behind the wheel of the car.

_First things first_. He drove to the station, parked Blake's Ford, and walked hurriedly towards his rented Chevy, thumbing at his phone. _If I do this fast enough, no one else will see me like this._

"Blake," he started as soon as the other man answered. "You should have someone pick up Mars' car. I'm done with it."

"Where the _fuck_ are you, Norman? And where's my _fucking car?_"

"I'm doing my job, Blake. I'm done with your car, too. It's in the lot." He slid behind the wheel of his rental.

"You asshole. What the fuck have you been - "

"Goodbye, Blake." He hung up. _One more loose end tied off._

On the way to his own hotel, he mused over the shoebox. _Could just go back there and open the origami. I bet there's something written inside, and that's why Mars lost his shit when I picked it up. But if he knows I've read them, he might just self-sabotage the whole thing. Refuse to give up any more information. Make the clues unfindable for himself, somehow. Would be considered a violation of the rules_. He snarled with irritation. _Jesus **Christ** I hate crazylogic. Just have to keep trying to get what I can out of him._

Jayden snuck back into his hotel, taking a side door, feeling irrationally shy about walking past the front desk. In his room, he stared longingly at the bed as he began to strip. _I miss you, bed. I promise, I'll spend as much time with you as I can. Later. _The shower was both painful and energizing, and the clean clothes felt like a luxury. _I knew bringing that second suit would come in handy. Well, Norman, when someone falls down as much as you do, that's just common sense. Shit, I hate it when asshole me is right._

He patted the contents of his breast pocket, double-checking. _Glasses-glove-tripto. All present and accounted for_. He hesitated, then dug through his suitcase and pulled out two more tubes of the drug, slipping them in with the first. _Come on guys, join the party. Better safe than sorry._ He grabbed a proper coat as he checked the clock, and hurried towards the door. He still had Mars' room key, and felt a rising confidence about getting more of the puzzle put together.

On the way to the Cross Road, he stopped guiltily for fast food. _Just need some fuel to keep going_. He pulled over in the parking lot to wolf down the hamburger and fries. _God, I hate eating on the road_.

Back at the cheap hotel room, Jayden opened the door as quietly as possible, hoping Mars hadn't woken enough to load the gun and shoot him in the face in panic. Both Mars and Paige were sleeping on the bed - it looked like she'd settled herself, fully clothed, under the blanket of the half Mars wasn't taking up. He eased his way into the room, noticing a half-full grocery bag on the floor, and an empty plastic food container on top of the fridge.

He shut the door behind him and hesitated.

"Ms. Paige? Madison?" She stirred uneasily. He poked into the grocery bag - there were a number of what looked like deli items inside. Sandwiches, pasta salad, some bottles of water. _Might as well put these in the fridge_. She came awake as he opened the minifridge door.

"Norman! Oh, you should have woken me!" She was dazed with sleep.

"Pretty sure I just did." He slid the containers in.

"There's, uh. There's food. I got some food, if you want any. I guess you found it. Wow, I really needed that nap."

"I'm good, thanks," he replied, shutting the door.

"I've got something. I've got a lead."

He came instantly to attention. "What? What is it? I thought I told you to call me if you thought of anything."

She rolled her eyes, getting out of the bed. "Get over it. I knew you were coming back here." She yawned and stretched as Jayden fidgeted impatiently.

"So, you know, I have my own sources. I found out who owns that house on Marble Street. The one where Ethan cut off his finger." Her eyes were shining.

"Okay," he responded cautiously. _Probably shouldn't mention that I could have pulled that up in about ten seconds, if I knew she wanted it._ "And?"

"Sounds like a shady, shady guy. I'm hoping he might know something. I want to go check it out."

"What?" he was confused. "You think the owner knows where Shaun is? That place looked totally abandoned. I doubt he's done anything with it in years."

"Well, yeah," she said defensively. "But at least it's a start. If he rents out that property, maybe he does others, too. Maybe he knows where there are other empty places. Shaun could be in one of them."

"I don't - " he started, then checked himself. _That actually sounds like a pretty safe way to make sure she's occupied for a little bit. Let her do her little Nancy Drew thing, get down to business with Mars_. "All right. Why don't you go look into that. My turn to babysit."

"You're sure you don't want to come?"

"Yeah, someone should stay with him," he nodded towards Mars, who hadn't moved an inch during their conversation. "Call me if anything important comes up. Promise, this time."

"I promise," she tossed at him, tugging on her shoes. "I guess I owe you, now. For the bike and everything."

"Yes. Yes, you do." He took a seat by the desk, by the tempting box, pulling the ARI glove out of his pocket. "You get going. I'm going to get caught up on a few things."

She looked confused, but nodded. "Okay. I'll let you know." He was already sliding on the glasses as she slipped out the door.

The dry air on the dusty red planet filled his chest, and he sighed with pleasure. _Going to Mars to get away from Mars_. It was a cosmic prank. _Let's see if there's anything new_.

Lloyd appeared from nowhere, smartly dressed as always – Jayden's friendly ghost, his bad inside joke, his cadaverous companion.

"How are you today, sir?" he asked.

"Been better, Lloyd."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir. Can I help you with something?"

"Maybe in a minute." He dug into the data with both hands. _Oh, hell,_ he realized with surprise. _There's footage from the park. A car that could match the tire prints_. He hurriedly yanked its file, and felt his heart sink. Reported stolen, looked like it'd probably passed through the possession of one Jackson Neville. _Looks like the guy is running a standard chop shop. Probably refits a few cars a week. Nothing there._ He rubbed his chin anxiously.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

"I've got nowhere to go. I'm stuck until Mars spills his guts. Shit, maybe I should've gone with Paige."

"It seems to me, sir, that we're seeing entirely too much of each other." Lloyd flicked a few grains of red dust off of his otherwise impeccable jacket.

_What? _"Excuse me?"

"Far be it from me to say, sir, but perhaps you should leave now."

Jayden was speechless. _Lloyd's mouthing off to me. What the hell?_ He stared at the image's patient smile, his own mouth hanging open. _Fuck, the worst part is, he's right_.

"I'm . . . I'm going to go," he finally stammered.

"That seems wise, sir," Lloyd countered, and the last thing Jayden saw as he pulled the shades from his face was that sad, knowing smile.

The room filled out around him, infinitely less vibrant than the dead surface of the planet he'd just left.

_Well. Shit._


	9. Chapter 9

_More. I need more. I need what's in his head. _He tried not to think about how unnerved he was by what had just happened. _Just forget about it. Time to get down to brass tacks._

"Mars!" he shouted. The man on the bed twitched. Jayden rose and moved towards him. "Mars!" he said again, and leant down to shake his shoulders. Mars flopped in his grip, his eyes slowly coming open, frightened, disoriented.

"What?" he said, shying away from Jayden's grasp. "What are you – where – what time is it?"

Jayden grabbed the surprised other man by the upper arms and forcefully dragged him upright, setting his back against the headboard. Mars, looking bewildered, half-resisted, half-cooperated, pushing himself away. As the agent released him, he closed his arms again into the familiar self-embrace of his injuries, shuddering, puzzled. Jayden quickly raided the fridge.

"Here," he said, throwing a bottle of water and a sandwich onto the mattress next to the man on the bed; Mars blinked. "Eat this. We've got to talk."

Mars swallowed, looking away from the food. "Can't," he said. "Nauseous."

"I bet you are," Jayden snapped. "That'll happen when you're dehydrated and been eating nothing but pain pills. Jesus, Mars, you're so out of steam that I had to carry you in here, and you're not going to make it two blocks on your way out unless you do something about it. You wanna let Shaun die because you weren't willing to choke down half a sandwich?"

Mars goggled at him. "Right," he finally said. "You're right." He began to tentatively pick up the food, and Jayden relaxed slightly, settling into the desk chair to put himself at eye level with Mars.

"Just take small bites," he counseled, "Chew slow. It'll make it easier." _I should know_. "It's time to trade. Are the figures in the box the last of them?" Mars nodded warily. "And when you open them, they tell you what to do?"

"No, just where to go. I get instructions when I get there."

"All right, that means you've got three of your clues in your head, and two more to go?" There was a pause before Mars nodded again, his eyes flickering away, and Jayden felt his irritation rising. _And already, he's hiding something_. He decided not to pursue it.

"All right then, let's have those first three clues." Mars shook his head this time, and drank deeply from the water bottle. "Two? One of them? Well, why the hell not? I thought we had a deal."

"I . . . I've got to do the trials myself. Get all the pieces together myself."

"Why?"

"That's just – "

"What'll happen if you don't?"

"I think . . ." Mars swallowed hard, looking queasy again, putting the food aside. "I don't think I'll be allowed to win." _Okay,_ thought Jayden, _let's read that as, the Beast in my head won't let you play_. _Fuckin' crazylogic._

"Well, what _can_ you give me?" he asked. "Can you at least tell me where you had to go? Look, I already know you went to the Marble Street house and cut your damn finger off, and that you got yourself all fucked up at the old power plant. What happened to your ribs?"

"How did you . . . ?" Mars looked deeply shocked.

"I know that, Mr. Mars, because _I am damn good at what I do_. Do you think I'm making you talk to me because I'm trying to punish you? Because I'm trying to stop you? You need to talk to me, because I am _so_ good that if you're honest with me, _I can help you save your son_. I don't give a shit what you did, if it was perverse, if it was cruel, if it was illegal – not until Shaun is safe."

Mars licked his lips. "There was a car. I had to get a car."

"Good. Good start." Jayden pulled out the ARI again and put it on. "This is going to look a little strange, Mr. Mars, but just keep going, I can hear you. And keep eating."

"It was at one of those long-storage places. I had a claim ticket."

"Which place? Where? What was the car?"

"A garage on Roosevelt. In Lexington. I don't remember the exact address. I think it was a Pontiac. Reddish?" Jayden already had it. _Joe's Garage. Joseph Grandin, owner. _He began flipping through the pages of all the files he could find on Grandin.

"Okay, and then what?"

"I had to drive it, take it to a highway interchange on the south side, and then drive it five miles down the highway to get the first clue."

Still checking Grandin's background, Jayden shook his head, confused. "That's it?"

There was another pause, and then he heard, "Against traffic. On the wrong side of the barrier."

"Jesus," he said, taken aback, "That's – oh, that's _great_. That's _perfect_!"

"What?"

"Okay, hold on, I've got this. Wait!" He picked his database and plunged in, headfirst. The local police reports for the last two days burst open in front of him like a peacock's tail, and it took him only moments to get what he was after. Only one car had ended up in a spectacular upside-down crash after driving down the wrong side of the highway: a 2000 Pontiac Sunfire, license plate 620LFR20. He found the VIN, and started shaking information out of it like a terrier with a rat. Looked like the Pontiac had been in storage for a while; there was nothing on it for a few years, not after it got stolen. The police report on its theft - the reporting officer managed to sound deeply irritated, even in text - mentioned that it had probably disappeared through a chop shop, though there wasn't enough evidence to go on. A chop shop run by Jackson Neville. _The one, the only_.

"I've got it, Mr. Mars. I've got a place to go. Have you ever met a guy named Jackson Neville?" There was no response. "Mars?" Nothing. _If that asshole left – I wasn't __**that**__ tuned out, was I? _Jayden ripped off the ARI, struggling to refocus on the room.

He sighed with relief. Mars was still there, just asleep again, his head turned down towards one shoulder, the last quarter of the sandwich abandoned in his lap. _God, when this is all over with, this guy's gonna sleep for a year. Guess he'll have the time_. He had a sudden flash of doubt: _Oh, shit, if he was in __**that**__ accident, he's lucky as hell he's even alive. What if he's been bleeding internally for a day?_ "Mr. Mars?" he repeated. Mars didn't move.

He stumbled slightly as he got to his feet, and the room left without him. Only the bed remained, its sheets drifting slightly in the breeze that moved across the surface of the red planet, a reclining figure rising from it. "Ethan?" he asked hoarsely, but instead was met with Lloyd's sad smile, a gentle shake of the head.

"Can't say I'm surprised to see you again, sir. You really should be more careful."

And, just like that, it was over, and he was slamming into the air. He hit mid-air hard – _really hard_ – and scrabbled uselessly at it as he gasped in panic. _It's glass, you dolt_, he realized with a shock. The room was back, and he'd fallen heavily against the sliding glass door, so hard that it was still reverberating in its track.

_Oh, well, that's good_, he thought disjointedly, as the room tilted crazily away from him. _Just glass. Physics still works_. He knew he was falling, but couldn't quite work out in which direction, and the _crack_ of his cheekbone against the minifridge felt more like an assault than a consequence of gravity, as did the shock of his body meeting the floor. He put his arms up defensively, like a man receiving a beating, to ward off further attacks. When they failed to come, he knew abstractly that he must be done falling, though his inner ear refused to admit it.

_Bathroom. You can make it to the bathroom from here_. He shut his eyes and tried to right his body, guiding himself by touch – when he felt pressure on his front, that would mean he was lying on it. _Hell_, he told himself encouragingly, _this room is so small you're practically already __**in**__ the bathroom._ He made it right-side up and opened his eyes, only to discover that the doorway was nowhere in sight. It must be behind him. _Shit._ He closed his eyes again. It took a lot of effort to decide to start pushing himself backwards on his belly, and he started doing so, carefully. Something didn't seem right. He decided to interrogate this problem.

_Where are you going, Norman? I'm going to the bathroom. Why? Because the ARI is eating a hole in my brain and I need the tripto to stop it. Where is the tripto? It is in my pocket. Are you sure?_ He stopped pushing to check_. Yes._ He started again, but his heels hit the wall behind him. He was going to have to open his eyes to turn around._ Wait, Norman. Why are you going to the bathroom to take it? Because . . . because it's secret. Well, who's going to see?_

It took far longer than it should have for him to reach the conclusion: _Good point_. He dug hastily for a vial, fumbled it to his face, and sniffed deeply. Again. Funny, how he couldn't make it across a room, but his hands remembered enough to perform the complex operation of getting his fix. Releasing the vial, he put his hands over his face, and the familiar warmth ran its course through his body.

From the space behind his eyes to the small of his back. From the beds of his fingernails to the hollow at his throat. From the back of his brain to the base of his scrotum. From the balls of his feet to the pit of his belly. He turned into a web, an endless spool of not-pain, of _better_ than not-pain, of the kind of relief that promised him it would never hurt again. He remembered who he was, now, it was so obvious. Lying here on his stomach, his face pillowed in his hands, he remembered who he was. He was Ethan Mars in that filthy rain-slicked alley, laid out like a dead man. He was Mars' shadow self, the one who did terrible things, and if he just thought a little harder, he'd remember what they were.

He let his eyes drift open. _That is one fucking ugly carpet. I am going to start making not-ugly carpets for hotel rooms, and I am going to make a million dollars. Origami Killer first, then carpets. Wait, that thought was an important one. Killer. Shaun Mars. Oh, damn, better get up_.

That was the problem with the triptocaine. If he didn't take it, he got all the terrifying aftereffects from too much ARI, plus the withdrawal from the tripto itself. If he did take it, it was so very hard to concentrate on what was going on around him. Half the time he'd end up kissing about fifteen minutes goodbye, plus, of course, pretty much being able to set his watch by when he'd need to take more again. Even when he managed to get his shit together, it was so hard to focus after taking it, such a struggle to operate in the physical world. Everything lost all sense of urgency, of importance, of solidity. It wasn't a bad place to be, high on tripto, but it certainly wasn't a useful one.

_You could stop using the ARI so much, Norman._

_ And __**you**__ can just shut up._

It wasn't too hard, getting to his hands and knees. He considered the floor. He'd left a wandering trail of blood from his face as he'd slithered backwards across the carpet. _Maybe I got lucky and left it all there_, he hoped. _Well, let's do this the easy way; it's not like I'm trying to keep my dignity at this point_. Turning awkwardly, he crawled into the bathroom on all fours, using the sink to haul himself to his feet.

_Not bad, Norman_, he thought, seeing himself in the mirror, and immediately began washing his face for the nth time that day. _No blood on the shirt, don't look like the walking dead. Sure, okay, pretty rumpled, but it's a small price to pay._ There was a bright red line across his cheek from hitting the fridge that he was sure would turn into a bruise later, but, frankly, it probably wouldn't stand out too much at this point. He straightened his suit, his tie, and raised his eyebrows at himself. _Well, later, I should probably try to figure out what the fuck just happened._ Right now, though, he still had that telltale tingle in his fingertips, the looseness in his wrists, the little tickle of pleasure behind his sternum, and it was hard to care about the ways in which his body was betraying him. He fixed his cuffs with his humming fingers.

Walking back into the room almost made him laugh. Mars hadn't moved. _The perfect companion for illicit drug use_. Then he remembered his last thought before his accidental step off the planet: the car crash. Mars' injuries. He sobered, despite the buzzing in his veins. "Mr. Mars," he called, loudly. There was no response, and in his keyed-up state, he already felt himself flirting with panic. _Calm down, Norman. Just because you just realized he might be more hurt than you thought doesn't mean it's the cue for him to kick the bucket right this minute_. He moved to the bed to shake the man's shoulder. "Ethan!"

Mars came awake again, and stared at him groggily. "What? What happened?"

"You fell asleep again. Just for a few minutes." _I hope_. Jayden eyed him carefully. _How would I even know if he's messed up inside? Before he drops dead?_ "How do you feel? How's your stomach?"

Mars shook his head and grimaced, rewrapping the rest of the sandwich and moving it to the bedspread. "Not great. I don't think I can eat any more." _Don't know if that's enough to keep him going, but he does look pretty green around the gills, still._

"All right, you gave it a shot. Keep drinking the water, though. Listen, you're not, uh," Jayden paused, embarrassed. "I don't know, peeing blood or anything, are you?"

"Not that I . . . know of." Mars looked confused, and was leaning back from him slightly. _Oh, good, now we're both even more massively uncomfortable_.

"You'd tell me if you were."

Mars just stared. _No, you probably wouldn't._ "Listen, have you ever met a man named Jackson Neville? Mad Jack?" Jayden thought back to the ID he'd found. "Big black guy? Big, _big_ black guy? Might have bought a car from him? Your Toyota?"

Mars considered, then shook his head. "No, doesn't ring any bells." _Dammit. There's still got to be a link. Too much of a coincidence._ He looked restless, and moved as if to rise. "I'd like to get going."

"No, stay there for a minute. Let's see if you can give me anything else, first."

He plucked the box off the desk and set it gently on the bed, the clip and gun sliding audibly inside, then reseated himself.

"Go ahead, open up your next address." Mars looked doubtful. "I won't peek. Look, I would have done it by now, right? While I've been here, you've been unconscious more than you've been awake, I've had the chance. Open it up, and tell me what you can."

Slowly, Mars pulled out the shark, unfolded it, and stared. After a moment, he slapped the paper down hard on the bed beside him – Jayden watched it go, hypnotized – covered his face with his hands, and began to jerk, convulsively. It took Jayden a moment to realize that he could hear Mars' stomach churning, audibly; he wasn't sobbing, but gagging.

"Okay, Ethan. Just breathe. Concentrate on breathing." Mars began alternately gasping and gulping loudly. "That's good. Keep it up." _God damn you, just tell me what it says_. _How bad can a damn address be?_ It seemed to take forever for Mars to take his hands away – his face was flushed, his eyes watery. "Try drinking a little more water. Let your stomach settle. Where do you need to go?"

Mars sipped shakily, then raised his eyes to Jayden and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you."

_God, I don't even remember wanting to punch Blake this hard. Breathe, yourself, Norman. Crazylogic, remember?_ "Okay," he made himself say, "Why's that?"

"It's . . ." he seemed to be searching for the words. "Look, it doesn't matter."

"The hell it doesn't!"

"No, I mean the address. It wouldn't help. I don't think it would help."

"Well, tell me anyway, let me decide."

"No," Mars said, hand over his mouth again, muffled. "Don't make me talk about it."

"Well, you have to give me _some_ idea."

Mars shook his head, swallowing again.

"What are you going to do, walk there? You need a lift, don't you?"

There was a long, long silence. Jayden could practically see the gears turning in the other man's head.

"Okay," said Mars. He picked the paper back up, studying it. "Okay. I have to go to Lexington."

_There we go._ "Where in Lexington?"

Mars reached casually into the box, retrieving the gun. "Just take me to the seven thousand block of Longway Road." He picked up the clip and began working it clumsily into place.

"What do you need the gun for, Ethan?"

"Just in case. I took it along last time, too. Just in case." Mars wasn't meeting his eyes. _Liar_.

"Did the gun come in the box?"

"Yeah." _Just in case. I see. _He wondered if there was anything around Longway that might be in trouble - a bank to rob, a daycare to terrorize_. _He didn't know the city well enough. ARI would know, but he wasn't going back there yet.

_Okay. You can work it out of him in the car_. He rose, looking at Mars expectantly. "You gonna keep it down?"

"I think so." Gun loaded, Mars rubbed his sternum, managed a tiny burp.

"Okay. Grab the water. Let's go to Lexington."


	10. Chapter 10

Mars leaned wearily against the car as Jayden unlocked it. The FBI agent looked nervously at him. _You're taking a guy who's halfway between falling asleep and puking, and you're going to put him in a moving vehicle. How well do you think this is going to turn out, Norman?_

"You going to make it there, Mr. Mars?"

"Yeah." _I almost believe you_. They entered the Chevy simultaneously, in an awkward silence.

He looked over at Mars as he began to back up. "So what exactly happened at the power station? How did you get so hurt there?"

"There was a sort of obstacle course to go through," replied Mars. "Broken glass and exposed wires. I guess I must have set it up. I don't really want to talk about it."

"Tell me about the blackouts. You remember there being drowned bodies in them?"

Mars looked surprised, then uncomfortable. "Yes. That's about all I do remember."

"When did they start?"

"After my son died. Jason. After I woke up." Mars was staring hard out the window, feeling his ribs again. "Please don't make me tell you about that."

"It's all right, Mr. Mars," Jayden said, carefully. "I know the story. I met your doctor." _Who, apparently, you've been less than honest with_. "How often do they happen?"

"Not all the time. There's always a couple right around when . . . when one of the boys goes missing. When the killings are happening."

"How do you know you're not just falling asleep?"

"I'll be one place, then everything sort of fades out, and I wake up in another." Mars paused. "That's what happened when Shaun disappeared. That's why I didn't go to the police right away. I was in the park with him, and then I blacked out, and I came to hours later in a completely different part of town." His voice was thickening with emotion. "I must have walked there after I took Shaun, and I didn't even remember. I ran all the way back to the park, and home, but Shaun was just gone."

"Yeah? Where did you wake up?"

"It's the same place a lot. Around Carnaby Square."

Jayden instantly burned with the desire to have ARI search for possible locations for Shaun Mars to be kept around there. _Better file that away for later_. "What's at Carnaby Square?"

Mars shrugged. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing important that I can think of. I never go there when I'm awake."

The parts weren't fitting together again for Jayden. _If he only has them once in a while, how is he getting all of this shit done? Meeting Jackson Neville? Setting up obstacle courses? _"Have you had any since then?"

"I'm not sure. I sort of haven't been doing that great for the last day or so. There's some holes. I had a . . . I faded out at a train station yesterday, when I was getting that box, just for a little bit. I don't really remember getting back to the hotel from the power plant. Or how I ended up in that alley with you and Madison."

_Not surprised by that last one. _"You got the box from a train station?"

"Lexington Station. It was in a locker there. I got the claim code in the mail. It had all the animals in it, the things I needed for the trials."

_Wonder if I can get surveillance tapes from there. Jesus, there's a shit ton of evidence locked up in his brain. _He wanted snap at Mars, tell him that holding back wasn't helping anything, but held his tongue. They were nearly at the address Mars had asked for, Jayden realized, and he still didn't know where the man was going. _Shit_. He began fretting over his options. _Maybe I should just let him go do his thing, question him after he's done. He left that rat back at the hotel, he's gonna have to go back there_. He pulled over.

"Do you have a cell phone on you?"

Mars looked panicked, his hand flickering automatically to his pocket. "What? Why?"

"Because we need a way to keep in touch, especially if I'm going to be your ride." _Why the hell else?_

Mars looked doubtful. "I don't know if it's a good idea."

"Look, just give me the number and I'll stop hassling you for the time being. I'll feel better once I have some kind of handle on where you are."

Mars' eyes were flickering up at the street sign for Longway. He looked anxious. "Okay," he said. "Okay." He pulled out a black cell phone, shielding its screen from Jayden with his hands, and rattled off a number. "Can you . . . only call if it's an emergency?"

"All right, just let me give you mine, then. You go do whatever you need to do, and I'll come get you afterwards."

Mars shook his head. "It can't make outgoing calls."

Jayden's mind was already racing ahead, planning, speculating. "All right. I'll call you when _I'm_ done, then. Ethan? Don't . . . don't do anything stupid." Mars, opening the door, wouldn't meet his eyes. _Fine, go do something stupid, then_. _Cut off your whole damn hand. Just get the clue, and we'll get Shaun._

He watched Mars slink away down the sidewalk and sighed uneasily, torn between his desire to follow Mars' movements, his itch to see what Neville could tell him, his need to make ARI tell him everything it could about Carnaby Square, the possibilities offered by Lexington Station. _Where do I start?_ Suddenly, the light went on in his head. _His phone can't make outgoing calls? What the hell? Oh, god __**damn**__ it. The phone. He got the phone out of the box, too. He's using the phone for something. _

It was the thought of the phone that tipped the scales, that tiny, possibly vital, piece of evidence that Mars was carrying away from him now. _That's it, I'm going after him_. He emerged back out into the rain.

Mars walked along for a couple of blocks, and Jayden tailed him, falling back as far as he dared while still keeping him in sight. The street was almost empty, and he didn't want to be spotted, should the other man happen to look behind him. Finally, Mars slowed, gazing up at the face of an apartment building, double-checked the paper in his hand, and disappeared through the front door. Jayden breathed a sigh of relief. _Not going to shoot up a daycare center, then. That's good_.

He wondered if he dared go in, hesitated, then slipped through the front door as quietly as he could. _Maybe I can get something from the names on the mailboxes. _He scanned them quickly. None of the names there matched any of the wispy leads he had tucked away in his head. _Damn. I wonder which floor he's on_. He cast a quick glance upstairs; someone was yelling, but he couldn't make out the words. _Do I go up there? Better just wait outside, don't want Mars to catch me snooping_.

He was about to step out again when he heard the first gunshot from overhead. _Oh, shit_, he thought, and he was already running up the stairs. _Oh, please, let him not be doing something as stupid as I think he is._

He reached a landing. The door was slightly cracked open, and Jayden knew he was on the right floor. A second shot roared from behind it, and the yelling had gotten louder. _That's not Mars. Who's that? Oh, Jesus. Gun out. Careful, Norman. One. Two. Three._

He kicked the door fully open, gun leveled. The shouting continued from a room somewhere to his right, and there was another shot. "FBI!" he yelled. "Drop your weapons!" He inched into the front room.

He heard a pause, then a stranger shouting, "What the _hell_?" Gritting his teeth, he began to slide sideways into the adjoining room. He barely had time to register it as some sort of dining room, when the voice's owner entered his field of vision – a man in a bathrobe, holding a pump-action shotgun, whirling towards him. Just beyond him, Mars was sprawled across a sofa, scrambling to his feet.

"FBI!" Jayden repeated. "Drop your – "

The door frame next to him exploded into splinters, obliterated by a new shotgun blast. In one smooth movement, he raised his pistol to shoulder height, cocked his head, and fired. The man with the shotgun jerked his head back, convulsed once, and toppled to the floor. The shotgun bounced away.

There was a shocked silence. After a moment, Mars doubled over, falling again to his knees, and finally gave up the struggle against his lunch.

Jayden couldn't move. Or think. _Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit._ The dying man twitched.

Jayden was dimly aware of Mars wiping his mouth, turning away from the puddle of vomit. He was doing something with the phone, with the body. Taking a picture of the bloody hole that now obliterated half the man's left cheek.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit._

Mars began to pound on the floor, to pound his pistol against the floor until it broke.

_I can't tell if that makes any sense. I don't understand what's going on. _He stopped paying attention to Mars entirely._ Is this really happening? Let this be an ARI nightmare. _The dead man's head was surrounded by a slowly-growing nimbus of blood. Jayden watched it spread, hypnotized. _  
_

"Agent Jayden?" Mars was looking at him uncertainly.

"Y-yeah." His voice cracked, sounding weirdly high and adolescent.

"Do you need to sit down?"

"Yeah." He still couldn't move. He'd been doing so well. He'd worked his way out of the standoffs with Nathaniel and Mars, through the fight with Korda, all without anyone ending up dead. He'd done all of it, all of his cases so far, without killing anyone. He'd never be able to say that again. Somewhere nearby, Mars was getting to his feet with difficulty.

"Agent Jayden." A tentative hand touched his elbow, and he stared at it. "Come on. Lower your gun." It was his turn to sway slightly on his feet, and Mars was pulling him gently backwards. He let himself be guided to a wooden chair, falling into it more heavily than he'd intended.

_Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit._ Numbly, mechanically, he reholstered his gun, and bent forward to drop his head between his knees. Mars was settling into another chair, fiddling with the phone. _That fucking phone._

"Ethan," he finally said, "Who did I just kill?"

"His name is Brad Silver. I guess he's a drug dealer. Was a drug dealer. That's all I know."

"What were you supposed to do here?"

There was a pause. "You did it for me." Jayden squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "I still. I still got the clue." There were no words. "I'm sorry."

"I had to, didn't I?"

"He was going to shoot you. He tried to shoot you. You shouldn't have had to do that. It should have been me. That should be my guilt." Mars' voice turned plaintive. "Why did you follow me?"

"To protect you from yourself." Jayden cracked a hoarse, dismal laugh. "I told you, I'm damn good at my job."

"Yes. We should go, I think," ventured Mars. "That was loud."

"Yeah. We probably should." _Should I call this in? That's your bullet in his head, Norman_. _No time. Shaun Mars doesn't have the time._ "All right. Guess we're in this together now, you and me." Jayden rose to his feet, avoiding looking towards the body on the floor, instead finally making eye contact with the other man. Mars looked ghastly, grief-stricken, and Jayden remembered Paige's words: _He strikes me as someone who's highly sensitive to pain around him, to other people hurting_. _Ethan_, he thought, _you never would have pulled that trigger._

"I think I got shot," said Mars unexpectedly. "A little bit."

"You _what?_"

"My back."

"Shit. Okay, lean forward." _Hell, he's right. It is only a little bit, though_. There was a dusting of buckshot punctures on the right shoulder of Mars' coat. Jayden pulled back on Mars' collar to peer inside. "Looks like you got lucky. You're going to have a hell of a bruise back there, but he just winged you. Your clothes got most of it, and the bandages." _Jesus, that's a lot of bandages. _"Come on. We're going to the car, and then you're going to show me what's on that phone." _You can beat yourself up later, Norman_. _Figure out how many lives it's okay to trade for one ten-year-old boy. _


	11. Chapter 11

Jayden's own phone rang as they headed down the stairs. _Jesus, not now, Blake_. He peeked at the screen, and saw with surprise that it wasn't Blake, but Paige calling. _Huh, maybe she actually got something out of her wild goose chase_. "Hold up, Mars," he said, "One second."

"Help." Her voice sounded small, frightened. There was some kind of commotion in the background, banging.

"What? What's going on? Ms. Paige? Madison?"

"Help," she said again, and then she was gone.

_Oh, we do not have the time for this. What's going on? Where is she? _He called her back. No answer._ Dammit, what did she say before? We should just go back to the hotel, figure out the Shaun situation_. He knew he couldn't do it, couldn't ignore that tiny voice. _Shit._ _A shady, shady guy, she said_. _Owner of the Marble Street place. I can ask ARI when we get in the car_.

"Mars, you're driving. We've got to go get Ms. Paige."

"Nnnno." Mars had paused in the entryway, leaning against the bank of mailboxes.

"I know time is running out, but something's wrong. Madison . . ." _Madison what? _"She needs help, and since we're in this together, you're coming with me."

"No, I can't drive." Mars' knuckles were white.

"Oh, goddammit." He tramped to the bottom of the stairs to examine the other man more closely. Mars had that deeply puzzled look on his face again, the one Jayden had learned by now meant that he was having trouble fighting against gravity. _You should've known this was coming, Norman. With the excitement over, his stomach empty, and that new injury on his shoulder, his body's decided it's had about enough of __**this**__ bullshit, and it's leaving without him. He's crashing again. Hard, and fast. _"And you made me park the car three blocks away, you paranoid bastard."

"What?" He ignored Mars' confusion. _Is it safe to leave him here? Cops might be on the way. Doesn't matter, you've got to._

"Sit down on the steps, here." Mars slid down the wall and gracelessly thumped to the floor, letting his legs sprawl in front of him. _Good enough_. "Listen, you're not allowed to pass out until I come back for you. I am going to be _pissed_ if you do."

He didn't bother to wait for a response, but slammed both palms into the street door and began sprinting down the sidewalk. _That's one good thing about the rain, not a lot of people outside_. _Almost makes it okay that this is the worst day of my life. No, that's not even a very good lie._ He briefly debated trying to ask ARI for help with Madison's location while he ran. _Better wait to sit down, Norman. Right now, you'd just run facefirst into a lamppost._ He almost hit his head on the door frame in his rush to enter the Chevy, and jerked it into the street, causing another driver to swerve and honk. _Sorry, and fuck you very much._ He double-parked outside the apartment building, banged on the hazard lights, and reached across to jam open the passenger side door before he got out and dashed back inside.

Mars was still on the floor, leaning against the wall, balanced on his left shoulder. "Oh, hey, you're still up." _I think_. "Good. Come on, car." Mars let out a strangled cry as Jayden helped him to his feet. "That shoulder starting to give you problems?"

"Nnngggggh."

_That's probably a yes._ Regardless, Mars limped forwards with him, and the two of them flinched together at the additional honks that accompanied their progress into the street, where Jayden bundled the weaving larger man back into the passenger seat.

He threw himself back behind the steering wheel, and tossed the ARI onto his face. He fumbled for the glove. "ARI, title holder for . . ." _Ah, fuck, I've forgotten the address_. He had to pause to dig it out of ARI's memory. "Yeah, that. Who owns that?" It sprang up in front of him: _Adrian Baker. There's the address. Is he shady? He's kind of an old – oh. Oh, I see. Yes – _Baker's history was all there, an unwelcome surprise – _yes, that man is shady. _Drug connections, jail time, some medical review board records with dark, dark hints. He wanted to do more research, but that "help" echoed in his ear. "Okay. Directions?" He got them.

"Are you talking to me?" Mars was determinedly clinging to consciousness.

"No." Jayden flipped off the ARI, turned off his hazard lights, and caused another small nexus of traffic consternation as he pulled forward. _See, Lloyd, I can use it for just two minutes. I can._

"Can you take me back to the hotel?"

"No. Ms. Paige has saved your ass often enough, time for you to return the favor. We're still going after Shaun, this is just a stop on the way."

There was a pause. "Okay." _And I can already tell that you're going to be a lot of help. _Jayden looked over. Mars might be asleep again, or just saving his strength; it was hard to tell._ Well, who knows, maybe I'll need a doorstop_. He pressed down hard on the accelerator.

It wasn't a long trip, and he knew he'd found the right place. There was Paige's now-familiar bike, parked in the street. "Mr. Mars?" Mars didn't move. _Well, if he wasn't dead to the world before, he sure is now_. _Good to know he's got my back_. He winced a little at his own ingratitude. _Guy just held your hand for you when you . . . just now, Norman. _The ellipsis was hard to fill in._ He's doing his best, and it's pretty good, for a crazy man._

He ducked through the rain on his way to the front porch, rang the doorbell. Nothing. He pounded, hesitated, redialed Paige's number, and thought he heard a tinny ring from inside. _Damn_. "FBI! I'm coming in!"

_Yep, this is completely illegal. What are you, learning search procedures from Blake, now?_

Opening the door was like getting kicked in the face. _**Fuck**_. He fumbled his gun out, his eyes already watering. During training, back at the academy, they'd had to deploy the OC spray on each other, to teach them that it wasn't particularly safe or fun to use. To prepare them for the havoc of discomfort it produced, the pepper burning in your eyes, your lungs. It _had_ been pretty funny, fucking each other up like that, until you ended up being the one choking against the wall. _Lesson learned_.

This room smelled like someone had whitewashed the place in the stuff. He peered in, cautiously. The interior of the room was hazy, but it looked like there'd been some sort of disturbance – papers were scattered about, a chair was overturned. There was a cell phone on the floor. _Paige's phone?_ He squinted. _No one's pointing a gun back at me. Yet_. He felt uncomfortable, already aiming his own weapon again so soon. _God, I want a drink. A hit. PTSD counseling. I don't know if I can take much more of this before I end up looking like Mars, out there_. He edged forward into the room, sneezing.

_Better make this fast. _He held his breath, squinting, as he maneuvered through the first floor – bedroom and bathroom both yielded nothing. As he neared the rear of the house, he heard a whirring noise emanating from behind a closed door. _Somebody __**is**__ home_. He gave the kitchen only a cursory glance before easing the other door open. Shadowy stairs led down to an unfinished concrete floor. The source of the noise was down there, somewhere. He pointed his gun questioningly down into the gap.

"Hello?" he asked, lamely.

"I knew you'd come for me," he heard. "You might as well show yourself."

"Mr. Baker?"

"_Doctor_ Baker, as you know perfectly well."

_Well, pardon the fuck out of me_. "Doctor Baker, I'm with the FBI. I'm looking for a woman named Madison Paige."

"I believe that if you simply advance down the steps, you'll find her." _This is a bad idea_.

"Norman?" He could barely hear it over the whirring sound, it was almost a whisper, but it was definitely Paige. _Oh, god, it's a bad idea, but you're doing it anyway, you poor dumb bastard_. He began inching down the stairs; the more of the room that revealed itself, the less happy he was about it.

Gun out, he slowly took it all in – the stains, the tools, the gurney with Paige tied to it, the grimly smiling figure standing over her, dangling a small, running circular saw directly over one of her wide-open eyes. "I've been waiting for this day for _years_," said the slight man, and Jayden knew he'd fallen deep, deep into the rabbithole of crazylogic.

_Shit. If I shoot him, that thing is going into her eye. And he knows it_. "Waiting for what, Doctor Baker?" Both Baker's and Paige's faces were red and swollen, and Jayden thought he had a pretty good idea that his pepper spray had been involved.

"For the day when you would reveal yourselves openly. I know you've been watching me." The saw blade quivered in rage, and Paige flinched away from it, infinitesimally.

"Who's that, Doctor Baker?" _Shit, there's somebody else in the room. Someone behind him. Someone who is . . . very much not moving._

"It doesn't matter, you're all the same. FBI, CIA, IRS, can't ever leave me alone. But I've got something you want now, don't I?" The smile was back. "I've got something you want, and I want some answers."

"I'll do what I can, Doctor Baker. I'm not a very important person." _Fuck, does he have a basement of corpses?_

"Feh," replied Baker, looking disgusted. "Underlings. Always the underlings. Tell me, FBI, what did you send this little bitch after me for, eh?" He pushed the saw a little closer to her face. "What was this little _cunt_'s job supposed to be?"

"She doesn't know anything, Doctor Baker." _Wait, maybe that's bad to tell him_. _She should sound like she's worth keeping alive._ _What does he want?_ "She's not really . . . a government agent. She was just doing some work for us. She plants spy cameras." Paige didn't move, but her wide eyes left the blade of the spinning saw for a second to flicker towards his face disbelievingly. _Oh Jesus, Madison, I'm trying. I'm trying_.

Baker was grinning triumphantly. "You need to pick some smarter contractors, FBI. This stupid girl never even made it past my living room."

"Apparently she did a pretty good job last time." His hands were slick with sweat.

Baker snarled. "What do you mean, last time? I've never seen her before in my life."

"Well, that's why it was a good job."

"Where are they?" Baker looked deeply suspicious. "Where are the cameras?"

"I'm not sure, Doctor Baker. I told you, I'm not a very important person. I know . . . I know what the other peoples' jobs are who are watching you, but I don't know a lot of the details of their work. She must know where the cameras are." _Please don't cut her please don't cut her please don't cut her_.

"Oh, yes?" Baker considered him. "What was _his_ job?" He jabbed his head behind him into the partial darkness. _I was really hoping I was wrong about that being a body_.

"I . . ." Jayden was running out of inventions. "I don't know, sir, I can't quite see who it is."

"Matthew, from the 'census.'" Baker raised his free hand to make the air quotes. "What was he really after?"

_Oh Jesus, he was trying to take your information for the census, you crazy __**fuck**_**. **"Sound guy," he said, desperately. "Wiring the house for sound."

"Hmph," said Baker, apparently satisfied. He shot Jayden a calculating glance. "You, FBI, need to put your gun down."

"Can't do that, Doctor Baker. I'm just supposed to get her out of here and go. We need her for another job."

"And _I_," Baker said, "need to know where those cameras are. And _she_," he gestured downwards, "doesn't need both eyes to talk. Or her nose. Or her fingers." He wiggled the saw, still gravitationally poised over Paige's face. "I think maybe we understand each other, yes?" Paige had her eyes screwed shut now.

"Wait!" Jayden's mind was hurtling along at breakneck speed. "I can – I can tell you about the mailman!"

Baker sniffed. "I already _know_ about the mailman. Talk about hiding your government agents in plain sight. I've seen the way he looks at me."

_Of course you already know about the mailman. Of course you do_. "Okay. But if you hurt her, I swear to god I'll never tell you which of your neighbors are working for us. You'll never know." He shifted from foot to foot. His shoulders were going numb.

Baker's eyes narrowed. "Oh, you'll _tell_ me, FBI. I don't think you understand who's holding all the cards, here."

"Nope," Jayden shook his head. "I'm not going to put the rest of our, our contractors in danger before I at least get one of them out of it. Cut her free, and I'll tell you. Cut her up, and they'll just, they'll keep," _What turns this guy's crank?_ "Watching. And reporting. Trying to get you put away again, for good this time. Eventually, they're going to succeed. And you'll _never know_."

Baker's face was flushing. "You stinking scumbag. You self-important little man."

"Going to keep stealing from you, sneaking into your house at night to steal your drugs. And fucking with your tap water, you didn't know about that, did you? And – "

"Listen, you," snapped Baker, lifting the saw threateningly towards Jayden, and Jayden squeezed the trigger. The back of Baker's head exploded, and the circular saw went whizzing down towards the gurney, cutting a neat line across the chest of Paige's jacket and chewing its way to the floor, where it danced, buzzing. She shrieked; Jayden fell helplessly to all fours, losing hold of his gun, his vision swimming momentarily. He had to blink to clear his head, and crawled unsteadily towards the saw, cautiously, as though it were a small, dangerous animal. Irrationally, he grabbed the cord and yanked as hard as he could, wanting to _please just shut up that fucking whine_. As it whirred slowly towards stillness, he realized that Paige was thrashing above him, wildly. He stared under the gurney, meeting the bland gaze of Baker's gurgling corpse, and used the table to pull himself to his feet.

"Ms. Paige," he said. "He's dead. He can't hurt you." She twisted violently away from him. "Madison, stop! You're hurting yourself!" He could see bloody weals rising up on both her wrists as she bucked on the table. "I can't help you unless you calm down."

She slumped, panting. "Get me out of here. I've got to get out of here."

"I'm working on it." The knots had been pulled impossibly tight by her struggles. He looked at the ominous collection of tools next to the gurney. Turning the saw back on was unthinkable. "Hold on. Don't move." He grabbed a short-bladed hatchet and sawed roughly at the rope binding her right wrist to the table. _Crazy bastard kept his tools sharp, I'll give him that._ She jerked her wrist away as he worked, and the last strands tore, leaving a tight bracelet of rope and a swinging cord dangling from her right arm. Paige plunged her newly-freed hand towards the knots on her left, trying to work at them, and he began sawing at that one, too, then her left ankle.

She jerked her right leg free before he even had a chance to start on those bindings, and rolled off the gurney, flipping towards the ground, while he made a startled, mostly futile effort to keep her from plummeting directly to the floor. "Outside," she gasped. She was shaking like an aspen as she got to her feet, leaning on him slightly, but he had trouble keeping up with her as she lunged up the stairs.

The two of them lurched through the living room, coughing anew at the lingering effects of the pepper spray. Paige just managed to stumble out onto the front porch, and slipped, sitting down hard on the top step. Jayden didn't quite manage to catch her in time, and he heard the jolt crack her teeth together. She was stunned for a second, then began wrestling at the bracelets of rope still around her wrists, breathing heavily. He sat down to help her.

"Are you okay?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "No."

_That was a pretty dumb question, Norman_. "No, I bet you're not. But did he actually hurt you? Are you hurt anywhere?" He patiently picked at the cords on her left wrist.

"I really liked this jacket," she said inanely, and burst into tears. He hesitated, then draped an arm across her shoulders, startled when she turned to bury her face in his coat and sob uncontrollably. _Guess I'm not the only one having the worst day of my life_.

"It's okay," he said awkwardly, "It's over," though he didn't believe it for a second. He was tired, and nauseated, and shaky, and filled with self-loathing. _Norman the killer. Norman Jayden, killer and junkie. That's me_. _Shooting people in the head. That's what all those good marksmanship scores ended up as._ Being on edge since Longway Street, he'd been pushing himself towards exhaustion, but at least he hadn't had time to think before now. _Maybe when she's done, she'll let me cry on her_. They sat there for a long time, in the rain. When she started to subside, he gently reached down to pull apart the last of the ropes at her wrists and ankles. She was staring at him.

"You _came_," she said. "When I called you."

"Damn straight," he replied. "Your wrists are a little fucked up." The skin, already raw from her struggle with the handcuffs, had torn in places from the rough abrasion of the ropes.

"I didn't even feel that," she said, looking at them wonderingly. "I think they'll be okay. He drugged me with something, I don't know what, but I feel better now. When I started to pass out, I remembered I had your pepper spray. I thought maybe I could use it to get away, but it didn't really work out."

"Yeah, you're not supposed to use the whole thing at once, you know. Probably bought you a little time."

"I found something out, though," Paige added. She still looked dazed. "I know who was renting that room from him."

"Well, hey. That's great." _Don't know how useful that is, but you'd have to be a real asshole to tell her that, Norman_.

Approaching footsteps made them both look up, nervously, and Jayden was aware once again of acute discomfort. The two of them were both wet, sitting on the front porch, the front door wide open behind them, and he was willing to bet that, despite the rain, the effects of the OC spray had made his eyes as swollen as Paige's. A young man in a blue coat had started up the walk towards them, and now slowed, eyeing them cautiously. Jayden felt Paige tense under his arm, and quietly slipped himself free, just in case. _Oh, now, what does this guy want? Is it Baker's equally crazy nephew or something?_

"Uh. Sir? Madam?" The man cleared his throat nervously.

"Yes?" Jayden responded cautiously.

"This might be a bad time."

"Yes."

"But the Lord brings us all help in our bad times, doesn't he? I've come to bring you His word. Maybe we could talk."

Jayden stared. "Fuck. Off," he finally said. The man stepped back, startled. Beside him, Paige resumed shaking. "Go on, get out of here. Scram." Looking offended, the stranger shrugged, and stalked on down the block. Jayden looked over at Paige, sliding his hand onto her back again. Her face was buried in her hands, her shoulders twitching. "Are you okay? He seemed pretty harmless."

She snorted, and he realized that she was giggling helplessly. "You just told a _Bible_ salesman to go _fuck_ himself."

"Wh- I thought he was like a Jehovah's Witness or something. You mean that little rat wanted to _sell_ us a Bible?"

She shook her head and looked back up at him. "He's totally one of those guys who walks around door-to-door with the forms and try to get you to order them. I've seen them."

He smiled. _The FBI is sure making a few friends, today_. _You're a junkie, and a killer **and** a fucking ambassador of peace, Norman Jayden._ "Well, now I want him to come back so I can tell him to do it again."

She cackled, then clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, I feel so bad for laughing. There's that poor guy dead in the basement. Not the doc, the census guy. Do you think there's more?"

"I'm almost certain of it. _Doctor_ Baker had some pretty deep-running crazylogic operating, there. Don't worry about it, Ms. Paige, it's a very human reaction, laughing after something like this."

"Some deep-running what? Do you do this all the time?"

"Apparently, I do now. I don't know what the hell is wrong with your city, but you've got far more than your fair share of crazy. Maybe there _is_ something in the tap water. I definitely need to call someone about this. Can't let Baker's victims just disappear out here. You should get going."

"Is that Ethan in the car? How is he?" Jayden squinted through the passenger side window at the pale blob that was Mars' face.

"Out cold again when I left him. The two of us . . . had an adventure." _Jesus, that's in poor taste, Norman_. "He got shot."

"He _what?"_

"Just a little bit. It'll keep. I think your phone's still in the house."

"Oh. I . . . I don't want to go back in."

"That's okay," Jayden said, rising. "I'll go. I'll get you your phone, you head back to the hotel. I'm going to call this in anonymously, and then I'll meet you back there. I think I might have figured out how to find Shaun Mars, but I almost literally have not had a minute to sit down and work things out."

He could tell she was more than ready to leave, and as soon as he'd handed her the phone, she was striding back towards her bike. He gave her some time, fetching his Glock from the basement floor, then called in a suitably vague report – shots fired, screams – from Baker's landline, hanging up quickly. _Not worth it to take the time to clean up. I'll just deal with the fallout later. By the time forensics figure out I was here, Shaun Mars will either be dead or safe_.

Mars came half-awake as he slammed the driver's side door shut. "Where are we? You want to go help Madison?"

"She got the help she needed, Ethan."

"Oh. That's good."

"Yes, it is. Very good."

"I need to get the last figure." It sounded like he was drifting off again already.

"Yes, Mr. Mars. I know. We're on our way." Jayden started the car. _And I need to sit down and have a little heart-to-heart with my evidence, your phone, and ARI_. _And Lloyd can just keep his fat mouth shut about it_.


	12. Chapter 12

Jayden once again glared at the Cross Road's stairs, then over at the sleeping Mars. _We'd better not do this in the car. Maybe it would take less time if I just got a room on the ground floor and brought the box down there_. He decided against it, sighing. _Things are already complicated enough_.

"Mr. Mars," he said. To his surprise, the other man seemed to wake almost instantly, rolling his head towards him. "We're back. What do you think about getting up those stairs?"

"I think I can go for a little bit now," said Mars, thoughtfully. _Yeah, I've heard that before. Fine, let's fail in style_. Jayden exited the car, and to his surprise, by the time he'd walked to the passenger side, the other man was doing the same, shakily. _Don't get your hopes up, Norman. Remember last time._

"How can I help you, Mr. Mars?"

"Let me hang on to you. I can't really get my right arm to go up, so it's going to have to be the left." _Surprisingly coherent, there. All right_. Jayden worked Mars' left hand delicately around his shoulders, being careful to avoid the missing finger, and secured the wrist. They moved slowly and relentlessly forwards.

"You feel dizzy at all, Mr. Mars? How's the pain?"

"You know, it hurts a lot, but I'm getting used to it." Mars sounded like a vaguely disinterested commentator. _Well, that's worrying, but if it's working for him, I'm just gonna shut the hell up. _They took the stairs in measured silence, Jayden letting the other man rest briefly on the landings, and the trip to 207 was almost miraculously without major incident.

The room was empty. Mars pulled away from him, resting heavily against the room's metal wardrobe as Jayden closed the door behind them.

"Mr. Mars, maybe you'd better sit back down."

"Yeah," admitted Mars. "Bathroom, first."

"Oh. Ah. Right." While the taller man pushed himself slowly along the wall, Jayden dialed Paige. It took a few rings for her to pick up. "Ms. Paige? Where are you?" The bathroom door shut.

"I'm in my hotel room," her voice came back to him. "I'm only a few doors down from Ethan's. I just needed to sort of get my head together."

"That's fair." He walked to the desk and eased the lid of the shoebox open. The rat showed its belly up towards him, and he picked it up as he talked. "We're back."

"Okay, I'll be right down."

"No need," he said, and dragged the lid back into place. "We're already up in the room. Just come over."

"Oh." There was a startled, questioning tone in her voice.

"Yeah, he's doing pretty well at the moment."

"All right, then, two seconds."

"See you then," he said, and hung up. He turned the rat over and over in his hand, his thumb rubbing at it like a good-luck charm. _What terrible thing are you hiding in your belly? What have you been sent to destroy?_ The bathroom door began to creak open, and, guiltily, he shot his hand into his back pocket, flattening the rat against the space next to his wallet. _One more piece to add to the puzzle. I bet I can convince him to let me open it_. He looked uneasily up at Mars, who was in turn holding on to the door frame, taking another small rest.

"Come on, Mr. Mars," the agent said, and reached again for the man's left shoulder. "I think the bed is probably going to be the best option, right now."

Mars resisted his grasp, briefly. "I don't want to fall asleep again," he said. "I want to get going while I can still stay awake."

"Then sit down somewhere where you'll be using up less energy." Jayden pulled on his arm, and Mars made an irritated-sounding grumble, but came along in his grasp. Paige quietly opened the room's door as Mars was drawing his legs up onto the bed to half-recline, grimacing as he settled against the headboard, and both men started slightly. _Christ,_ thought Jayden, _we're going to have permanent nervous tics by the end of this_.

"Ethan," she said, "How are you?"

"I'm all right," came the response, and Jayden rolled his eyes involuntarily. _I don't even know why she bothers to ask, any more_. _He's going to keep saying he's all right until the moment he falls down dead._ Jayden himself trudged back to the desk chair, beginning to work through what he had to say.

"You look better," she continued, moving into the room. "Did you get something to eat?"

"Yeah," said Mars.

"No," said Jayden. "Well, technically he did."

Mars shot him an irritated glance, but admitted, "I threw up."

Paige made a face. "That's no good," she said, and cracked open the fridge. "Better try again." She retrieved a plastic container and bottle of water, shoving them both into his lap as she sat down on the other side of the bed.

Mars accepted them, then studied her face. "Are _you_ all right?" he asked her. "Agent Jayden said you needed help." _Jesus, he remembers that?_

She looked away. "I was in a pretty rough spot," she said, lightly. "But you guys came and got me out." Mars opened his mouth, looking confused and slightly guilty. _Someone who's highly sensitive to pain around him, to other people hurting_.

Jayden shook the thought away, rubbed his knees with impatience. "Okay, listen," he said, and both raised their eyes to him. "This is going to be a little complicated, but it's worth it, and I need your help to make it work." Paige curled up on the bed, bringing her knees to her chest, and Mars began picking at the contents of the bowl.

"This," Jayden said, opening the glasses reverently in his hand, "is ARI, short for Added Reality Interface. Mr. Mars, you've seen me use it, though I'm sure you had no idea what was going on." Mars shook his head in agreement, chewing. "It's sort of hard to explain. There's nothing else like it yet, out there. It's a massive collection of uplinked databases, information from just about anywhere you want. That's how I found you at the house we were just at, Ms. Paige, by looking through public records. It can also _see_ things. Things that most of the time, you can only see if you do a full forensic sweep of an area. DNA traces, chemical compounds, that kind of thing. That's how I found you two after you got off the subway. Followed a blood trail right to you. The reason I want to sit down with it now is because I think that, with the new information you've both given me and anything else you have, if I can just feed that in, we can be done with this. Faster, and safer than either of you, than any of us, going through what we went through to get to this point. Frankly, I think the three of us have suffered enough by now."

Mars looked wary, Paige confused.

"You have magic sunglasses that help you fight crime," she said.

"More or less." _Except it sounds less stupid when I say it_.

"I don't know if it'll be okay," said Mars. "It's supposed to be – "

"Ethan," said Jayden. He swallowed. "How did you get your last clue?"

There was a chilly silence, while Paige looked back and forth between them, confused. "What?" she said. "What am I missing?"

"We . . . we completed the trial together," continued Jayden. "That means two things. One, it seems like it's permissible for Ethan to get help along the way. Two, it means he owes me at least the chance to try things my way. Isn't that right? Ethan?"

Unscrewing the water bottle, staring hard at his hands, Mars nodded silently, and Jayden relaxed slightly, his stomach still jumping. _Already blackmailing someone with your first kill, Norman. Remember back when you used to be a human being?_ "All right, then," he said, slipping his way into the ARI glove. "I'm going to start plugging in data, everything I have so far. Sometimes, I'll be talking to the ARI, sometimes to you. Try to keep up, and be patient. This is going to work. Mr. Mars, give me your phone."

Mars looked panicked again, shaking his head, and Jayden sighed resignedly. _Okay, Norman. Do the little stuff, first_._ Show him what it can do_.

"Why do you want his phone?" asked Paige. She was starting to look irritated at being left in the dark.

"You'll see in a minute, Ms. Paige. Here we go." The glasses were on his face, and the room disappeared as he pulled open the world he'd constructed around the Origami Killings. He'd made it his personal galaxy, clusters of constellations methodically arranged, each data point hanging around him like a winking Christmas tree light. _Victims-suspects-peripheral figures-places-items-history-psych profile. _He hung serenely in their center, and went to work.

_Places, first_. He drew it towards him, and began tossing up more tiny bulbs to hang in the air, all the locations he'd learned over the last day that he hadn't yet had time to arrange. _CarnabySquare Baker'splace LexingtonStation Silver'sPlace PicoPowerPlant Joe'sGarage_. _What else?_

He started barking questions. "Paige, where were you going to go on to from here?"

"Oh, um. The Blue Lagoon. It's a nightclub. There's this guy named – "

"Not yet," he snapped. "I'll ask you for that in a minute. Mars, where did you grow up?"

He snatched the address out of the sound around his head, then the next gap he thought of, then the next, then the next, and the constellation grew brighter.

_BlueLagoon PinckneyStreet Highway61Exit5 ChiltonPark KearneyElementary_

The universe filled. When he started plugging in the name of the subway stop he'd picked up Mars' blood trail at, he knew he'd gone snowblind, dizzy with data. _Back off, Norman, back off. You're throwing in stuff you know is useless. Move on_. He tossed away his new overlay of location data, trying not to get too excited at the fact that it was beginning to resemble a bird's nest, a crazy whirlpool with outlying flurries that he mentally edged aside.

_Now._ He grabbed the clouds of faces towards him. _This is gonna hurt_. He dove in, anyway, letting the dead faces in his head become just names, just things.

_JosephGrandin JacksonNeville BradSilver AdrianBaker CarterBlake_

The voices that responded to his spoken questions stopped belonging to faces, too, became just two frustratingly slow streams of information. He threw in Mars' psychologist, Paige's new contact at the Blue Lagoon, her sources, old known criminal associates of everyone he could think of. Dim lines were starting to gather between them.

_NormanJayden NormanJayden NormanJayden NormanJayden stop stop stop stop_.

That had been dangerously close to the edge. He forced himself to freeze, to step back, to throw the stars away from his face while he caught his breath.

"Agent Jayden? Are you all right?" _Ethan Mars' voice; no new data_. He ignored it. It persisted. "Agent Jayden?"

"I'm fine," he said, and, suddenly, he meant it, as the glow around him solidified slightly. "It's coming together." They were connecting, some of them, lots of them, and he shook his head incredulously. "It's so wrong."

"What is?" Paige's voice.

"Ethan Mars is not the Origami Killer. He's a data error that I can't explain, but he's not the killer." _Paige was right. She was so right. _"They're all connected, here," he said excitedly, pointing at the lines around him. "Him, and him, and them, and _those_."

". . . what?" It didn't matter, he'd proved it. _There's a very big spider in the middle of this web, and he's been around for a long, __**long**__ time. _Criminal histories, fenced cars, shady property deals, mysterious fires, murdered children, missing fathers._ He's not some architect who's been wandering around with brain damage for two years, who does backdoor dealings for a few lost hours. He goes way back, and he plays rough. What name runs through these?_ He forced himself to remember why he was in there; the killer himself could wait, Shaun Mars couldn't._ But I still don't have a __**place**_. _It should all lead back to Carnaby Square, but there's nowhere there for this to happen. Nothing. _He remembered.

"Phone," he said, and he accidentally shoved _history_ to one side as he reached blindly out for it. "What's on the phone?"

"It's got . . ." Mars' voice paused, and Jayden wanted to smack him. "Videos, when I finish the trials. Of Shaun in the water. It's been giving me parts of an address. It's still missing a bunch of letters. That's what I need the last origami figure for, to go get the last piece." _Oh, shit, I should put that in, too. Phone, first_. The voice began to slowly pace through a jumble of blanks and numbers and letters. _Is this going to be nearby? Would it be? Is this one of those crazy spiral arms of the web that stretches out of the city? _He began hastily grabbing all of the parts of the map in towards him, letting ARI record the address itself.

"Norman," Madison's voice curled its way into his ear again. "Norman!"

"Yeah, I've almost got this." _Don't fucking interrupt him._

"Norman, you're bleeding." _Uh-oh_. He froze. "Oh, god, your _eyes_ are bleeding." _Oh shit. Pull out, pull out, pull out, let ARI process on its own._ "Oh, oh my god, take it off."

_I'm __**trying**__, lady, can't you see I'm trying?_ He patted vaguely towards his face. "Ha," he heard himself say. Suddenly, he couldn't make his mouth work right.

He felt her hands on his face, but when he looked up, there was nothing there. He tried to focus on his own hands, discovered that they were made of grey static. He made the mistake of looking down, finding no solid ground beneath his feet, and began abruptly to drop into the suddenly starless void that had opened under him. He flailed wildly, too frightened to think of screaming.

_Too much, Norman. Too much. Too, too much._

He fell forever. He grew old, falling. The terror only increased – the longer he fell, the more certain he was that it was going to destroy him when he hit bottom.

His left ear ached piercingly. _Oh, Christ, that __**hurts**_**. **_What the hell is wrong with my __**ear**__? _It was ringing. With a word. With a woman's voice.

"_**BREATHE!**_"

His vision abruptly filled with blinding light, a shock like being plunged into icy water, and, involuntarily, he did. Breathe. A painful inhalation tore into his chest.

_Your tripto. Your tripto tripto tripto tripto_.

He closed his eyes, and tried to manage opening his breast pocket. He couldn't quite get his fingers to cooperate. There were more words.

"Norman, what is it? Is it your heart?" _No, next to it. Next to my heart_. _Why can't I fucking talk?_ He opened his eyes again, this time onto the plush hotel room he'd designed. _Oh thank Christ there's a floor this time_. Lloyd was kneeling over him, his face grave with concern.

"Sir, you really can't go on this way."

He gagged in response, and kept working for the pocket. _It's right fucking there, come on_.

"The way in which you've been using this environment has become unsustainable." Lloyd sat back placidly on his haunches.

His lungs were aching, and he had to force himself to gasp again, just as painfully.

"I really am afraid that you're acquiring permanent brain damage."

His fingers closed on the vial. _Almost there. Shut the fuck up, Lloyd_. He halfway managed to make the words come out of his mouth: "Shurrup, Loy."

"What? Come on, talk to me." The world shifted, and he was squinting through a red haze at a woman's face. "Keep talking." _In a minute. I need my fucking drugs first._ He fumbled the tube onto the floor, one-handed. _Oh, nice __**going**__, butterfingers._ He groaned, shutting his eyes again.

"Norman, what is this? Do you need this?"

"Guh." _Isn't it obvious?_ The tube was pressed back into his hand, and he wanted to cry for joy. He got it to his face, thumbed the top off, and sucked the tripto deep, deep into his body. There was a terrible roller-coaster moment where his stomach flipped and he was sure that this time, _this_ time, it wasn't going to work, and then all the important parts of his body exploded with relief.

_Oh my sweet Christ, she's __**talking**__ again. Why the fuck is that even necessary? What does she want?_ Eyes opening, he had a little more luck focusing on her face. "Thanks," he said, relatively clearly. _There, that should take care of it_.

"Norman, you had some kind of seizure. Can you understand me?" _Nope, apparently she's going to keep bothering me._

"Yes. Shut up." He tried to retreat into the part of his brain that was buzzing with chemical gratitude, but the blurred conversation taking place directly over his head was making it difficult.

"Is he dying? Did he get hurt before we got back here?"

"Not that I saw! What happened on the trial?"

"I think he almost fainted, but -"

_I don't need to be awake for this shit. _He shut them out, closing his eyes again, and the drone of their voices became a sort of pleasant soundtrack. He was being shaken.

"Norman, I'm going to go get some ice, okay? I'm going to get some ice for . . . for everything."

_Do whatever the fuck you want, I'm taking a nap_. He erected a hasty wall, of translucent bricks and triptocaine, and hid behind it in relief. _There we go_. He curled up in his warm burrow to sleep until spring.


	13. Chapter 13

"Wake up, asshole." There was a sharp, painful jab in his ribs, and he pried his eyes open. He was staring at his knees, and most of the world was sideways. His mouth tasted like metal. Lloyd was looming over him with an uncharacteristic, angry scowl. "So you're not dead. Gonna wish you were."

"What did I ever do to you?" Jayden mumbled, and as he blinked, the face shifted into Carter Blake's.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out if you think real hard, you little shit. Stealing my car is pretty much at the top of the list. And fucking disappearing. And not fucking _calling_ anyone when you figured out where Ethan Mars was." Another blink. Lloyd again. _This is not right at all_. "And in general fucking everything up so badly that you just killed Shaun Mars. And however many kids come after him."

Jayden knew it was still Blake, but he had to concentrate to get the shifting features to settle down. "I don't understand." _Anything_.

"You tipped him off, asshole. I don't know how the fuck you got here ahead of us, but he was ready to run." The color of Blake's jacket was slowly fading from Lloyd's red velvet to the detective's own black.

"What's that?"

"You're lying on his bathroom floor with blood all over your face. What did he do, jump you?"

"Sure, why not?" All of the day's lies were blurring together in his head, and he couldn't remember which ones he was supposed to be telling at the moment._ Where was I before this? How did I get in the bathroom? _

A weary, patient voice drifted in from somewhere. "Blake, just call the paramedics in here." _Ash._ "Listen to him, he's useless. He's probably got a concussion."

"Oh, no. You know there's a reason I told them to fuck off. Norman here's a tough little shit, aren't you, Norman?" He kicked again at Jayden's ribs, not gently. "Norman doesn't need any fucking help. He would have let us known if he did."

"Yeah," Jayden agreed. "I'm okay." _In that I'm not dead_. He tried to sit up, then rolled over onto his stomach, instead. "I just need a second." He checked his watch. _What time was it, the last time I knew what time it was?_ The sentence became circular in his brain. "How did you guys get here?"

"Hotel employee called it in," said Blake. "Citizen doing his honest duty. If only everyone was so fuckin' upright and honest as the manager at the Cross Road hotel. What a world that would be, eh, Norman?"

"Come on, Blake," drawled Ash. "Let's just get going." Jayden managed to lever himself to sit upright against the wall.

"How did _you_ get here, Norman?" _I don't remember_. Jayden blinked stupidly.

"There was a trail," he said slowly. "From the subway." _That's not right. That's right, but it's not right_. He stared at his gloved right hand. _The ARI glove_. _I was doing something in ARI. I was on a **streak** in ARI. _

"So, with all your fuckin' fancy technology, and your _misappropriation_ of _police resources_, you managed to get here, what, ten minutes before us? Half an hour? And then you got yourself jumped and tipped off the suspect?" Blake's tone was rising irately. "You're fucking _useless_, Jayden. You're _worse_ than useless. You're _done_."

_Yeah, that sounds about right. Both the misappropriation and the uselessness. _Things were slowly starting to come back together, but it was a struggle.

"Where did he go, you sneaky little shit?" Blake hissed at him. "You tracked him this far with your fancy glasses, where's he running to?"

He didn't have to lie. "I don't know. I haven't the faintest fuckin' idea." He thought about getting up, but the parts of his brain that would allow him to do that were operating just as haphazardly as everything else.

"Blake!" Ash's voice again, distant. "Just get in the car!" Blake shot an irritated glance over his shoulder.

"One minute, dammit!" He turned his attention back to Jayden. "All right, listen, you numb fuck. I'm just waiting for Captain Perry's final authorization to get you out of my life for good. I think he'll agree that you've become a liability. In the meanwhile, I found you a babysitter. He's _also_ being punished for being a stupid fuck, so the two of you should get along great." He beckoned towards someone out of sight, and turned on his heel to stalk out of the room. "All right, moron. Get in there and debrief him."

Jayden turned his attention back to his hands, and slowly, jerkily, pulled off the glove, automatically tucking it back into his breast pocket. Which seemed emptier than it should have. _Where's my stuff? It's probably scattered all over –_

"Sir?" _That's not Lloyd. Who - ? _He looked up into a miserable, boyish face, and a big chunk of his day clicked into place.

"Officer Kinney." It was more of a revelation than an actual greeting.

"Agent Jayden, do you need medical assistance?" He was holding a clipboard, and avoiding eye contact.

"No, but I will need your help." _And about half my brain is telling the other half that I'm going to get it._ "To stand up. I need some help standing up."

Kinney's look of discomfort intensified, but he set the clipboard by the sink and crouched down, letting Jayden grab his shoulder for support. "I think Detective Ash may have been right, sir," he said, as they struggled upwards together. "You should probably get your head checked out."

"Just let me wake up a little," Jayden grunted back. He didn't feel dizzy, just . . . _uncoordinated_. He studied his feet and spread them a bit, trying to compensate for his fuzziness, while Kinney unhappily grasped at his waist. "Wash my face." He looked hopefully towards the sink, and the young officer had to catch him in earnest as he jerked in surprise and lost his balance.

"Agent Jayden?" _Oh sweet flaming Christ what the fuck **happened**? _"Agent Jayden, I'm going to put you down again." Kinney was fumbling for his fateful radio.

"No, no, I'm sorry," Jayden tightened his grip, and straightened. "I'm okay. Just a little bit of a shock. You don't . . . you don't know what happened to my face, do you?"

". . . no, sir."

"Well, I'm sure I'll figure it out." _It looks like I lost a barfight. Like, somebody hit me in the face with a bar._ A deepening crow's wing of a bruise marred the length of one cheek and trickled upwards to illuminate the inner crescent moon of the eye socket above it, and half the eye it contained was bright red, from the iris to the nose. There was a large, triangularly-shaped gouge on the opposite side of his forehead, and he . . . thought he could detect a cut across his mouth underneath that, but it was hard to tell, because of the blood. _That _was the real horror show. It looked like mostly _dried_ blood, but gravity had pulled crazy threads of it across his face out of every cut, his nose, his mouth, his _eyes_. An auditory memory stirred: he'd been told that was happening. _Madison Paige said that_. Getting a handle on the memory made him feel slightly better. "What say you and me go out in the parking lot and scare some kids?"

Kinney looked like he wasn't sure if he should laugh or not. "Does it hurt?"

"Not really," Jayden said thoughtfully, and drifted carefully forward to lean on the sink. Kinney let him go. "Just the bruise." _In fact, I don't feel bad at all. _As if all the other signs weren't enough to remind him he was waking up after an epic ARI/tripto binge, his fingers felt quick, dexterous. He turned on the sink, and began to carefully wipe at the flaking trails. His dress shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, spotted down and through with dark droplets, and he managed to remember that it wasn't the first time that day. _At least she left me my tie, this time_.

"Tell me, Officer Kinney," he started. "You're debriefing me, which I assume means that Detective Blake pretty much told you to shoot me if I leave."

". . . yes, sir." _Well, that's something. The fact that he's willing to admit it probably means that he probably **likes** me better than Blake, and that's after I made his day hell._

"Are you also meant to be securing the scene? Because I've pretty much just contaminated the shit out of this bathroom."

"Yes, sir."

"I was joking. You are, really? What, just you?" _Did I ask the question I think I did?_

"Just me, Agent Jayden."

"I don't understand. There's – you don't – either – if there's – " _Is this my brain fucking up again?_ He squinted at his largely clean face; the injuries stood out starkly against his pale skin. "I'm sorry, Officer Kinney. I know I'm being a little slow, but that's . . . not . . . right, is it?"

"No. Detective Blake said that it didn't need to happen at all, that Ethan Mars was here and then he left and that was it."

"Just Ethan Mars, whacking me on the head," Jayden ventured, testing. _They still don't have a handle on Paige? I don't know who's dumber, the cops or the hotel employee who figured out Mars was here but not that he had an entourage._

"I guess so, Agent Jayden. So he said that it didn't matter how long it took or if. If a fuckup did it. So it's my job. It's supposed to be . . ."

"Part of your punishment," finished Jayden. He caught Kinney's eyes in the mirror, held them with his own.

"Yeah."

"For helping me. And not knowing that I was lying to you when I said I'd talked to Blake." _There, got that out on the table_.

"That's about the size of it, Agent Jayden." Kinney looked reproachful.

"That is a real shit sandwich you got handed there, Officer Kinney." Jayden turned to face the cop fully. "I promise you that I wasn't trying to fuck you over. You look like a smart guy; I'm sure you've figured out by now that I was on this trail, and I was afraid talking to Blake would let it get cold. You know how he is. I screwed up, it hurt you, and I'm not too proud to apologize. We're both only just trying to do our jobs. Shake?" He proffered his hand.

Kinney hesitated, then put out his own hand. He even gave Jayden a half-smile as he did so. _Jesus, he's like a puppy_.

"Incidentally," Jayden continued, "How long have you been on the force?"

"Two months, Agent Jayden." _Oh,_ _this kid is **mine**_.

"Well, I still need to get my thoughts together before I can help you fill out your busywork. I'd like to take a little look around at my new home for the next few hours." He locked the knot of his tie back into place, tucked his shirt in more evenly. _There. A perfectly neat, respectable man with blood down his front and the face that you mean when you say you should have seen the other guy_. "That is, after all, more or less what I do."

Kinney shrugged. "Sure."

"Could I have," Jayden raised his eyebrows meaningfully, "A moment of privacy?" As soon as Kinney ducked, embarrassed, out of the room, shutting the door behind him, Jayden began frisking himself at top speed. _She left my tie on – did she leave everything else?_ His second self-inventory of the day was just as nerve-wracking as the first, and with the cop out of the room, he had to catch himself against the sink this time when he realized what he was missing.

Everything important was gone – his phone, his car keys, the _glasses_. He could feel the anxiety rising in his chest. Everything that could lead him, could take him, to Shaun Mars. All he had left was the glove, the suddenly-useless glove, his gun, his handcuffs, and – he felt at his chest – one tube of triptocaine. He dove hastily to the floor. _Nothing in the tub. Nothing behind the toilet._ The expanse of the floor was marked only by streaks of blood leading from the main room, and the trash can – he dug through it hurriedly – contained nothing but wadded-up, stained gauze. He flicked open the medicine cabinet; only the first-aid supplies filled it.

_Okay. Okay. It's not over yet_. He braced his palms against the mirror and studied his startling face. Memories were beginning to file into place like slightly drunken soldiers, and he could almost piece the sequence together now. _Mars is innocent. Mars is innocent, and I can't quite remember why, but it's all in the ARI. I don't have that phone, and I don't have that address, but I haven't looked at the rest of the room yet, and Barney Fife Jr. out there has already forgiven me for fucking with him today. Let's go, Team Norman_. He flushed the toilet for good measure before he walked out.

Kinney was idly looking into the fridge when he emerged. "Do me a favor," said Jayden. "Sit on the bed. Stay there." The young officer, looking surprised, complied. Jayden tried not to stare at the desk where the shoebox should be, but did, anyway. _Gone_. "Do you know if anything was taken from the room by the officers on scene?"

"I'm pretty sure not. Like I said, Detective Blake –"

"Thinks that the only real police work you can do is twisting someone's arm." Kinney nodded at him, looking away. "Yeah, okay. Hold on."

Jayden slid the back door open, stepped on to the sheltered porch, and took a deep breath in the outside air. _All right, Norman. You keep telling yourself you don't need ARI. Prove it. Your stuff is probably still in there somewhere. You still know how to toss a room without it, don't you? Go do it. _He got down on his hands and knees.

"Sir?" the young cop called from inside, sounding alarmed again. "Are you all right?"

_Oh, for – all right, he means well. _"I'm fine, Officer Kinney. I'm looking for evidence. Just stay there."

He began on the porch, and moved inwards. It was like using ARI, in a way – forcing himself to move slowly, though the farther he got, the more he began to panic. He let the search consume his mind, made it make sure it was thinking in all three dimensions: _not just in the drawer, under the drawer, behind the drawer. Not just in the fridge, in the food containers, under the food containers. Not just in the closet, behind the closet, under the closet. Not just in the trash can, inside the trash in the can._ He kept catching his brain trying to wander back, reminding him that he still didn't have the full sequence of events down, that that might help, but he pushed it sternly back on track. _Do this, first. You **know** you can do this, but you **might** not be able to remember the other stuff._ He barely spoke to Kinney, who, awed into silence, helped him strip the bed, lift the mattress. He found the old quarter-sandwich that Mars had abandoned, a few stray pills of paracomol, other associated debris from their time together in the room. One by one, he happened upon the two empty glass tubes that used to contain his triptocaine, and palmed them, guiltily, using his body to block Kinney's view as he did so. He searched the bathroom again, just for good measure.

Finally, again on his hands and knees, he reached the front door, and he let himself start to sink into despair. _Nothing_. Nothing worthwhile, anyway – no scraps of paper, no hidden note left for him, certainly no sign of his missing possessions. He dropped fully to the floor, kneeling, and put his face in his hands to think. _Maybe there's something stuck under the door._ He reached up for the knob.

"Agent Jayden? I really can't – "

"I'm just going to look outside," he called back. "You can come with me, if you like." Jayden pulled himself up by the knob, opened it, and stepped outside. Kinney did in fact trail after him, nervously. There was nothing to be seen on the front balcony, either. _Maybe,_ he thought with a quick flutter of his chest, _maybe they left something in my car, maybe they're **in** my car. Where did I park - ?_ He braced himself against the railing and scanned the lot, but the Chevy was nowhere to be seen. _Of course. Your keys are gone, Norman. What did you think they used them for? _

He hung his head. _Let it go. Keep moving forward, there must still be options. Paige. Paige said she had a hotel room. Close by. Did she say the number? I don't think so. If she did, the ARI ate it right out of my head. How can I get in there?_ He began running through his options. _What can I tell Kinney? Without blasting Paige's identity all over the police frequency? _Thinking furiously, he let his hands perform their frustrated dance, seeking for the glasses, the phone, the keys, the – _what?_ In his back pocket, his fingers encountered an unexpected presence, a tiny wad of paper, and he could feel his brain struggling to make a connection as he dug it out and opened his clenched fist. There in his palm – crushed, crumpled, crippled, was the rat. He froze, staring.

"Agent Jayden?"

"Wha- ?" _I put it, I put it in my pocket, I put it in my pocket, they didn't know I took it, I've got the last origami figure_.

"What is _that?_" Jayden looked up at the young cop's face – mystified, awestruck, idealistic.

"Officer Kinney," he said, "I'm taking your patrol car."

* * *

On the road again, he felt a little bad. _Sure, if this all comes off, I am willing to move mountains for brave young Officer Kinney. But if it all goes tits-up, I'm not going to be in a position to do shit, and he's in the soup with the rest of us_. Once he'd gotten over his initial shock of discovery, the lie hadn't been too hard to spin. _Hell, I stole half of it from Mars, as it is_. Kid had seen a lot of movies. Convincing him that the Origami Killer had developed an obsession with the FBI agent assigned to the case, and was leaving clues that only he, Agent Jayden, was able to solve – piece of cake. _Officer Kinney, this boy's life hangs in your hands. I know you'll make the right decision_. Fortunately, Blake's idea of punishment - beyond literally kicking Jayden while he was down - had consisted largely of locking them up with each other's stupidity for a couple of hours. Kinney was giving him a good long head start before he called in to report that Jayden had stolen his car under the pretence of needing the first-aid kit out of the trunk.

Which, Jayden reflected, like all the best lies, had an element of truth in it. The lazily pleasant tingle of the triptocaine was wearing off, and he was starting to hurt, now, a dozen dull and sharp aches calling in with little reminders of his failures. _I wonder if I broke my goddamned face._

He glanced down at the unfolded square of brown paper beside him: 961 Rainbow Lane. _Maybe I can't get to Mars, but I don't have to. Only this does. I did the last trial, and, whatever this one is, god knows I'm at least less fucked up than he is. I can pull it off._ Wherever Mars was, as long as he had the phone, he'd get the message, the last clue, the last letters – and Jayden was willing to bet that Mars wasn't going to let go of that phone, come hell or high water.

The building looked unremarkable enough - an empty house - but Jayden entered slowly, warily. There was an unpromising-looking red light beaming towards him from an interior hallway, and he gritted his teeth as he headed towards it, flinching as the light from the far end hit his eyes. He edged down the hallway, back to the wall. _The hell? This place looks like a funhouse_. It was unsettling, the surrealistic lighting scheme, blinding white light at the end of a bloody tunnel. Jayden reached the door frame, hand cupped over his Glock, and took a deep breath. _What is it? Mars has already had to hurt himself, then . . . someone else. What comes after that? What's the crazylogic progression? Blowing up a building? Killing someone else's kid? _His heart sunk at the thought_. Fuck, maybe I'll get lucky and it's just a pit of rattlers._

He peered into the room cautiously. The room was sparsely decorated, overwhelmingly white, the light from its chandelier bleaching the walls, the floor, the few small furnishings. It looked abstract, divorced from reality, the kind of bare, modern room he might written for ARI if he liked that kind of aesthetic austerity. _It also looks . . . quiet._ He began to edge forward, half-expecting some sort of trap. His first confused impression was that the room was full of mirrors, arranged ceremonially around a table. _They're not mirrors, they're monitors. Those are cameras._ _Cameras mean a watcher. Someone is watching to see if what needs to be done is done. Let's not disappoint the man._

He stepped hesitantly toward the table, squinting at the objects on its surface: a glass vial, a watch, some sort of squat black media device. _Nope, still not getting it_. As he neared the table and leant down to inspect the items further, his own face appeared around him on the monitors in manifold manifestations, its damage magnified, reflected. He flinched at the sight of his half-crazed eye, the livid bruise that embraced it. Nervously, he pressed the screen of the media device, and red equalizer bars leapt into view.

"The last trial. The last question." A cold woman's voice, clearly mechanical. "Are you prepared to – " The voice stopped, suddenly, and the screen went black. _Prepared to what? What is it?_ He stared at it, confused, jabbed again at the screen. _What the fuck? What, he rents the fucking house, does it up like a whorehouse in outer space, and then buys shitty equipment?_

A monitor to his left abruptly blinked to black, startling him. He whipped his head towards it. _Christ, apparently he does. Maybe the thing on the table needs a new battery or – _then the next monitor went out, and he understood.

"Oh, _no_," he moaned. "Oh, no, no, no, no, _no, no, **no, no **_–"

The screens were flickering out, one by one, the lights on the cameras dying. _Cameras mean a watcher. You're being watched. You were being watched, and you're not Mars. Oh, fuck, he was right, he was **right**, it had to be him_ –

He sank to his knees and began to pound the table with the flat of his hand in frustration, regret, rage. The glass vial jumped at the violence of his attacks. The last camera turned off, and as he sank his forehead to the table, the room itself was plunged into darkness, the chandelier dying abruptly. Jayden knelt, desolate, in the traces of red light that streamed weakly in from the hallway.

_You finished that last trial because he couldn't **see** you, Norman. He didn't know you were there. Mars took that picture with his phone, he was sending it somewhere. You stupid **fuck**, you less than shit. You cocksucker. You waste. You nothing_. He pushed himself backwards from the table and let himself fall on his ass, sinking his forehead into the palm of one hand.

_Blake was right, for the wrong reasons. You just killed Shaun Mars. You did it. Might as well have drowned him yourself_. _You took the rat away from the one guy who could use it, and you lost him, and then you broke the clue so hard that it'll never, ever get fixed. He's not gonna turn those cameras back on. That's not how crazylogic works_. _You've. Fucked. Everything._

He forced himself up and away from the table, unable to bear any longer the proximity of his failure. In the bloody hallway, he let himself sag against the wall, and dragged himself along it, back onto the sidewalk, back into the street, back into the driver's seat of the squad car, waiting for his arrest, for the end of his career, of his life. _They'll find me soon enough. _Jayden dug around in his breast pocket for that last tube of triptocaine he knew he still had, and pulled it, shimmering, out into the light.

_How long ago was the last hit? Not sure, still missing some details, there_. He turned it. _Not gonna fix anything, but I think we're past that, now_. _I don't have anywhere else to go, I don't remember enough of the details. They wouldn't go back to the hotel, to his place, to her place. They don't know where I'm staying. I can't remember a single specific address, except for this one, and they don't have that_.

A bottle broke across the street, and he looked up reflexively at the raucous group of men smoking there. _Just a bunch of drunk guys. Hey, there's a thought – I could get drunk **and** fucked up on tripto. It's late, though. What time of day do they stop selling liquor in this state?_

_Hey._

_Hey._

"Hey!" he shouted, shoving the car door open violently. "Hey, you!"

The five men froze at his voice.

"Oh, shit," said one.

"Hey, man," said another. "Officer. We'll clean it up."

"Fuck it, I don't care," said Jayden. "Do any of you guys know a place called the Blue Lagoon?"


	14. Chapter 14

When he got close to the nightclub's address, Jayden tried to park the police car out of sight, but didn't have much success, leaving it sticking halfway out of an alley. _Like trying to hide a moose under a napkin. _ _Probably best I can do is to try to stay the fuck away from it. I bet Kinney's called it in by now. _He checked himself in the rear view mirror one last time. _Yep, still look like you've just come from Fight Club. Were you expecting it to magically change?_ He sighed. _Might as well use it. If you got it, flaunt it. _

He'd managed to drag the name of Paige's contact out of his limping brain: Paco Mendez. _I'm betting that either she's been here, she's coming here, or he can give me the information she was after._ _If I'm wrong . . . well, this place already has liquor._

The club was loud, crowded, and he flinched as he entered. _God, that music is hurting parts of my head that might still be important._ An exiting couple looked at him oddly, and he braced himself for the rest of the experience. _First stop, coat check girl_. She was easiest to reach, her counter just inside the door, her back towards him, flirting with a customer.

"Miss," he said, tapping the counter, "miss."

She turned away from her conversation and jerked back when she saw him. He ignored her reaction.

"I'm here," he continued, "to see Paco Mendez."

"Alex!" she yelled nervously over the din, into the crowd. "_Alex!_"

Jayden turned; the man already walking purposefully towards him was large, acne-scarred. _Bouncer. Next up in the chain of command. _

As soon as he got close enough to be understood over the racket, the bouncer started: "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"I," said Jayden, slipping out his identification and flipping it open, "am with the FBI. And I have just had a very, _very_ bad day. Do you think you have an impression of how bad my day has been?" He lifted his chin aggressively to better show off the damage to his face. _Christ, he's greasy._

The bouncer had stopped moving, and was eyeing Jayden sidelong. He nodded cautiously.

"Good," continued Jayden, slipping the ID back into his pocket. "I need to speak to Paco Mendez. Immediately."

"He's got company. He's not gonna like it."

"I couldn't care less."

The bouncer spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. "His office is through there. See those stairs? Up there." _Oh, good, I was hoping I'd have to cross the **entire fucking dance floor**. Shit, it'd be nice to know if I'm walking in on a coke party.  
_

"Actually, who's his company?" he asked, still wincing at the noise.

The bouncer shrugged, clearly trying to escape the conversation. "Female."

Jayden felt himself start to hope, and squelched it. _Don't start with pipe dreams about finding Paige here. Just get in there and talk to him_. He pushed past the bouncer and began maneuvering his way through the dance floor, feeling his face begin to throb with the rhythm of the music. _Jesus, I just want to lie down. Just for a little bit. In the dark_. The clubbers who accidentally looked him in the eye quickly moved out of his way, but he was mostly pushing through a sea of resisting bodies. The stairs were a welcome escape - the private security at the top, less welcome. The guard was already looking unnerved, suspicious, at the sight of Jayden's approach.

"Alex sent me up here," Jayden started. "Because I showed him this." He flashed his identification again. "Do you understand?"

The security guard shrank back. "I won't stop you," he said. "But he's banging some chick pretty hard in there. You might want to wait." Jayden flinched, he hoped not visibly, and suddenly found himself hoping that Paige hadn't come at all.

"I don't," countered Jayden, and pushed his way past and down the hall. _Oh, Jesus, Paige. If that's her, she's not gonna be okay. Get her out._

He knocked on the door. Voices raised angrily behind it, which he struggled to overhear. He put one hand on the doorknob, and knocked again. _ Come on, come on. _The voices ceased abruptly.

"Mr. Mendez?" He was grimacing in anticipation. _Let this be the one time today when I don't have to shoot anyone_. "Mr. Mendez, I'm with the FBI. I need to talk to you." Footsteps moved towards the door, and he pushed himself slightly behind the cover of the door frame, just in case, hand again brushing his gun. The door flew open, hard enough to make him flinch, and his brain had just enough time to process: _Friend. Do not shoot, _before Paige was on him, squeezing him so hard he thought he could hear his ribs crack.

"Easy," he gasped, and she dragged him into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

"Oh my god, Norman. Oh, god, I was afraid you were going to die. I was afraid you _were_ dead. Are you okay?" She pulled back to look at him. "Oh, your poor _face_. I can't believe you're here. Sit down, you look terrible."

"It's all right now," he said, gently detaching himself, his fingers registering the bare skin of her back as he quickly took in the room. "I'm okay. Where's Mars?" The room was a jumble of tackiness - zebra stripes, velvet, a fishtank occupying nearly a full wall to his left. There was a vanilla ice cream sofa sectional occupying a U across from his position in the doorway, surrounding an island of tiny tables shaped like letters. _Jesus, who did the decorating in here? A seventies porn star? _His gaze was arrested by the sight of a man slumped in a chair behind the lavishly executive desk to Jayden's right. _Oh, yeah, I guess so._

"He's outside in the car," Paige said, rubbing her arms. She was wearing her jeans slung low on her hips, and a barely-there lace black halter top that left very little to the imagination. _Very, very little_. _Guess it's cold in here._ "Maybe unconscious, maybe not. At least, I hope he's outside, I told him to call me if he left, but I don't think that's really his top priority right now. Or if he'll remember I said it. Or if he . . ." She trailed off, looking desolate. _Oh, Jesus, I don't even think I want to know more about that, yet_. "How did you find us?" she finished, lamely. "I thought maybe you were, were."

"Followed your last lead, really. You have yourself to thank. I'm in a little bit of hot water, but - all right, what happened to the guy in the chair? Is that Paco Mendez?"

"Yeah. I hit him. Then I duct taped him to the chair. Then I made him call the guy who uses the Marble Street apartment. He didn't want to, said I didn't know what I was screwing with, but I was very, very convincing. Then you knocked. Then I hit him _again_. And if he wakes up –"

"Yeah, I think I've got your methods down. Well." Jayden moved cautiously to Mendez, checking for a pulse. "Congratulations, Ms. Paige. You didn't kill him."

"The night's not over yet," she said, eyes narrowed.

"No, believe me, you don't want that on your head," he replied, quietly. "No matter how much of a sleazebag he is."

She looked abashed. "I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry, you're right. I didn't really mean -"

"Yeah, well." He swallowed. "Let's just get going."

"No, you don't understand, he's on his way," she said. "I thought you were him when you knocked."

"Who?"

"The guy who uses the _apartment_," she said, patiently. "I thought you were him when you first knocked. Oh, sit down, really. You look like you need to."

He sighed, and sank onto the sofa. It was true, his knees were trembling. "Just for a minute," he said. Paige was staring at him, hard.

"You," she said, "Do not have migraines at all."

"Well," he equivocated. "My head hurts pretty badly sometimes."

"Your magic sunglasses are bad for you."

"Do you have them?" Hope rose in his chest. "The ARI glasses?"

"Yes. Not on me, but they're safe. They don't seem that great, to me."

"They're very, very good for what I do. And they've been very good to you, today. Incidentally, you look a little underdressed, Ms. Paige."

"Not for here, I'm not." She crossed her arms defensively, shivering. "I traded with a drunk girl in the bathroom and slutted my way in here. I'm not proud of it, and I'm not happy about it, but it worked. And you're changing the subject."

"Do you want to put my jacket on?" He began shrugging out of it. _Can I get her to stay off-topic?_ "You . . . look cold." _Cheap shot, Norman_. _Right in the nipples._

She peered quickly down at herself, flushed, and grabbed the jacket out of his hand. "What the hell happened to you back in the hotel room? That was one of the most terrifying things I ever saw. Even Ethan was saying we should maybe just call an ambulance, if you can imagine that."

"What did you see?" he stalled.

"God, blood just started coming out of . . . out of your face. Everywhere on your face. I yanked the shades off of you – should I have done that? Because you freaked out. Tried to jump out of your chair, went right into the desk." She looked nervous, guilty.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you did the right thing." _Well, that probably accounts for most of the face_.

She cocooned herself in the jacket. "Then I think you had a seizure. You were thrashing like crazy. We sort of couldn't do anything but watch and try to not let you hit the furniture. I don't know how long it was, but it seemed like forever. You sort of started to come out of it, and I helped you with some kind of medication you had, but you were in really bad shape. I don't think you were breathing for a little bit, and we were trying to figure out what to do, and – well, what's the last thing you remember?"

"It's pretty fuzzy," he admitted. "I know Ethan is innocent, and I know his phone has an address on it, but a lot of the details are gone."

"So what was all that? What did the ARI do to you?"

He gave her a long, long look. "I'll trade you," he said. "Who are we waiting for?"

"His name is John Sheppard. All I know about him is that Paco said he lets him do whatever he wants in the Marble Street apartment, because he owes him. I don't know what for. And that he's on his way. I had Paco call him and tell him that he had to come over right now or the deal was off. Wasn't sure it would work, but from what I could hear, it sounded like the guy was pretty pissed, said he was coming. I've been waiting for him for a while." _That rings a bell. Old connections, bad dealings_. He wished he could grasp that ARI constellation again. "Your turn," she said. "Hotel room."

He stared hard at his hands while he decided whether to lie or not. _Fuck it. Fuck it, I'm tired._ "All right. This is personal, Ms. Paige, do you understand? This is _private_. It doesn't leave this room. You're right, the ARI isn't good for me. It's amazing – it really is. You can't even understand the things I've been able to do with it. But if I use it too much . . ." he shrugged, offhandedly. "Makes everything work too hard, too fast. Jumbles the electrical signals. The drug you saw helps me manage that."

"God. And the FBI just lets you do that?" He hesitated. "Oh, Norman. They don't know how bad it is, do they."

"Not yet. I think I'll probably say something about it after this is done."

"That's almost even worse. They just gave you experimental equipment and a bunch of, of, I don't know, radioactive cocaine, and turned you loose?"

_In for a penny, in for a pound_. "The drug is not strictly regulation. It's not good for me, either." Her eyebrows shot up. "Look, they sort of . . . it's all very nudge, nudge, wink, wink. 'Hey, in our preliminary findings, we discovered that this certain designer drug can help with the minor side effects, but it'll pretty much fuck you up, so you shouldn't use it. Oh, and by the way, there's a guy on the corner of Fifth and Sterling who sells it.' Not exactly that, but you get the picture." He rubbed his hands together. It was both a relief to share, and a burden to worry about her reliability. _Hope I live long enough to regret it. _He finally looked up at her horrified face.

"You're a fucking mess," she said.

"At the moment? Pretty much."

"You've got to stop," she said. "God, Norman, if what happened in the hotel room is normal for you now, you can't do that any more."

"And you," he snapped, "Have some serious anxiety issues about men and poor impulse control, and should go see a fucking therapist." She froze, high, bright red spots forming on her cheeks, as if he'd slapped her. He stared at her defiantly. _Doesn't feel so good when it's you under the microscope, does it, lady?_

"Okay," she said, slowly, hugging herself again. "Maybe we should stop talking about this. John Sheppard's got to be almost here." Her voice was quavering. _Oh, Christ, you hurt her bad, Norman_. _I thought we'd agreed to use your powers for good. _

"Look, I'm sorry –"

"Forget it."

"No, I am sorry, Ms. Paige. Madison. We're both hungry, and tired, and frightened. I'll admit I'm frightened. Feels like everyone else in the damn city is trying to beat the shit out of us, we can at least leave each other alone. Right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, okay." Paige met his eyes again. _She's not gonna bounce back from that right away, but it's a start._

"Great," he replied. "Give me back the glasses. I can finish this in about two minutes, with them."

"Oh, _Norman_," she sounded truly worn out, now. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think you should."

"All I need is a minute. I won't go in there too long, I promise. Two minutes, with the ARI and the phone. You can time me."

"Well, I can't – they're both in the car. With Ethan."

"All right. All right. Tell you what. I'll stay here with Mendez, you run out to the car and back. Bring me everything. I'll wait for this John Sheppard guy."

She nodded.

"Actually, wait," Jayden said thoughtfully, mind racing again. He cocked his head towards the unconscious Mendez. "See if he's got any money on him."

"What? No. Why?" She looked revulsed.

"What, you'll beat him up, but you won't take his wad?"

"I don't want to . . . _touch_ him again," she said uncomfortably. She fidgeted inside her coat. Jayden hesitated. _Should I just . . . nah, make her man up. Woman up. Come on, lady, take one for the team._

"Come on," he said, "I have a plan. Cheer up, if he moves, you get to hit him again."

She shook her head, but advanced on Mendez' body, and began searching it at arm's length, as though it were contaminated. Jayden put his hands together to think. It didn't take her long to come out with a wallet clip and a thick fold of cash. _How did I know?_

"Is there at least a couple hundred there?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think so," she replied.

"Okay, you're going to buy us a little breathing room. Take some of it, and on your way out, you hand it to the security guy out there. Look scared. _Really_ scared. Tell him that Mendez told him to take the rest of the night off. If he goes, that's great."

"Well, what if he doesn't?" she said. "He doesn't look too bright, but – come on."

"If that happens, you need to totally break down. Can you cry on command?"

". . . not really."

"Do your best. You just lose control of yourself, start crying hysterically. Tell him that Mendez is back here beating the shit out of me. He's going to kill me and chop me up into little pieces, and he's calling some big bad guys in to help him do it, get rid of the body. Mendez doesn't want Mr. Security to see them, know who they are, know anything about it. You weren't even supposed to tell _him_ about what Mendez is doing, you're just so scared and you want to get out of here. Shove the money at him and run like hell if he goes. If he still comes back here, you come with him, and we'll figure something out."

She stared at him like he'd grown an extra head, the bill clip forgotten in her hand.

". . . what?" he finally asked, uncomfortably.

"Are you really an FBI agent? Are you secretly a criminal mastermind or something?"

"I, what? No. I really am an FBI agent."

"Because that's a criminal mastermind plan."

_No, I just spend a lot of personal time trying to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and that makes me really, really good at lying. _"Can you do it?"

"Little girl lost routine. Check." _You already have a name for it, and I'm the weirdo._ She stripped off his jacket, chucking it on another part of the sofa, faced the door, and squared the shoulders of her bare back, bracing herself. "I'll be back soon as I can," she said, not looking at him, and slipped through the door.

Jayden waited tensely for a few minutes, Glock drawn, anticipating. When she didn't reappear, he laid his gun down on the tiny table across from him and took a minute to collect himself again. _Well, you gave up the goods, Norman. You told her your most important secret, and then you went and pissed her off_. He sighed and bent his forehead to his knees. _Maybe if I stop taking the triptocaine now, I won't test positive for it by the time she decides her conscience tells her she has to rat me out. If I can stop taking it. If I can stop doing ARI._ He shifted, cupping his chin in his palm, and opened his eyes to stare contemplatively at the floor.

The room seemed darker, murky. _Did the lights dim?_ Then the clownfish swam just over his scuffed shoes, and his heart stopped. _Oh, no. It can't be. _He squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open again. _I haven't even –_ he raised his head, reluctantly, to look around.

It was as though the fishtank he knew was behind him had expanded to infinite size. The room, its furnishings, had almost entirely disappeared. All that remained from his first impression of the room was the segment of white sectional sofa on which he was already seated, and – _Jesus, that's unsettling_ – the unconscious Paco Mendez, still slumped over in his desk chair, made ghostly by the watery illumination. Two men, seated peacefully at the bottom of an ocean that stretched out into darkness in every direction. Seaweed drifted slowly by; fish flickered in and out of Jayden's view.

_What's going on? Is it like an aftershock?_ There was no blinding pain, no additional shakiness. He reached forward, tentatively, groping for the edge of the table he remembered was in front of him. Another fish swam by, passing through his wrist, and he had a fleeting moment of utter vertigo. _I'm the real one, right? I'm the thing that's really happening?_ Then his fingertips met the table, and it flickered into existence, a tiny table shaped like a giant letter H. He groaned. _Novelty furniture __**not**__ helping_. _What do I do? What __**can**__ I do? At least Mendez is out of commission_. He lifted his hand again, and the H disappeared, replaced by a stretch of empty sea bed. _Just focus, Norman. Focus. Like you did on Blake's face._ He took a deep breath, held it, heard a soft cough to his right. _Oh, not now_.

"Sir?" He rubbed his eyes, reluctantly turned his head. There were three of them now in the flickering light – Jayden, and Mendez, and Lloyd, standing primly at attention between them. "I wish there were something I could do for you. Perhaps a drink?"

"Seems sort of redundant, don't you think?" Jayden waved his hand vaguely at their surroundings.

"Of course, sir. I should have considered."

"I don't know how to make it stop. How to turn it off."

Lloyd shook his head regretfully. "As I said, sir, I wish I could help."

"Then just go away. I'm sorry I ever wrote you." He ran his hands along the sofa's surface, trying to ground himself. _Is it safe to lie down?_ he wondered.

"You." _Oh, Christ, he's just echoing me now_. He looked back up in irritation.

The bartender took a step backwards, pulled a pistol from the pocket of his velvet jacket, and shot Mendez square in the forehead.

Jayden gaped. _What what what what – _

Lloyd whipped the gun towards Jayden, his face working into a decidedly un-Lloyd-like snarl, his voice crescendoing, deepening in rage: "_You've. Ruined. __**Everything!**_"

_The gun the gun the gun no time to find the gun_. Jayden sprang forward, low and fast, aiming a tackle towards the middle of Lloyd's slight frame. As the sofa disappeared, he collided instead with the body of a man roughly the size of a Buick. _Oh, shi-_

The gun went off next to his ear as his opponent stumbled backwards, and a high whine began to ring in the right side of his head. As Jayden pitched downwards, unprepared for the shock of impact against the larger man, he grabbed desperately, scoring one handhold on the thick coat that had just appeared – and the other on the pistol's slide. _**Yes**_. He shifted his grip on the gun to both hands, brought his right knee up into the other man's belly, and pushed himself away as hard as he could, a swimmer diving backwards.

Miraculously, the gun came with him as he plunged towards the ocean bed. _Hot damn and hallelujah_. Then his back struck an invisible piece of furniture, the pistol flew off into the darkness, and the fight began in earnest.


	15. Chapter 15

It was a nightmare, almost literally – Jayden's reality kept changing with every object his hands came into contact with. _Now you see it, now you don't_. At least he could see his assailant more clearly now – Lloyd had dissolved into a large, lumbering figure in a long dark coat, his face swathed, unseeable. Not-Lloyd had recovered from his own temporary loss of balance from Jayden's assault, and was pushing himself off of something Jayden saw only for an instant. _The desk_. There were still three men – Jayden, the presumably-dead Mendez, and not-Lloyd - but the rest of the room, for Jayden, remained bizarrely still, peaceful, sea life flickering around them with great unconcern. Even worse, it was empty. _Where the fuck where the fuck where the fuck_.

Not-Lloyd moved towards him, and as he did so, put a hand down to thrust a suddenly-appearing chair out of his way, which vanished into the ocean. _I can't even remember where the fucking walls are_. Jayden jerked upright, grabbing for where he thought the sofa he'd been sitting on was. _Made it._ He hauled himself up and scrambled to his feet on top of the seat, just in time to meet the other man's attack. Not-Lloyd, grabbing for him, caught a hold of his shirt, and yanked Jayden towards him. _Motherfu-_

Off-balance, Jayden threw himself towards his opponent, went right over the larger man's shoulder. _Don't break your neck, asshole_, he thought, somersaulting forwards towards the sandy ocean floor. _It's not as soft as it looks_. He felt the other man's grip on him loosen, unable to compensate for his violent change of direction, and was briefly relieved, before his trajectory completed and his spine hit the ground. _Ah shit that hurt don't stop moving_. While the big man was still turning, Jayden used his forward momentum to pull himself up and forwards, immediately pitching face-first into something soft. Disorientatingly, the same white sofa he'd just jumped off of suddenly filled his view. _No, it's the one you were facing. The one on the other side of the room_. Unable to untangle his legs, he used his arms to hurl himself up and over the back of it, first slamming into a briefly-visible wall, then thudding to the ocean floor behind the couch.

When he hit the floor/sand again, landing awkwardly on his side, he looked back, frantically trying to twist into a position where he could rise successfully to his feet. Not-Lloyd was running away from him. _Oh, Christ. Oh, __**shit**__. _He was in an agony of indecision. _If he leaves, I might not die. If he leaves, Shaun Mars might die._ He rocked forwards onto all fours. _Go after him, asshole_. His opponent had stridden forwards and stopped, one hand resting against a patch of vaguely-translucent wall, and Jayden shot forwards like a runner taking off from the blocks.

He let his left hand kiss the wall as he ran forward, Not-Lloyd was fussing just beyond Mendez with something in front of him that hadn't come into focus yet. _The desk was in the middle of the wall_, he thought frantically. _If I can just run up along here_ – The other man was turning, whirling, and reality tore a little bit more. _Is that a __**sword**__ is he holding a fucking __**sword**__ -_

*THOCK*

He ran headlong into what became a suspended punching bag just before the blade hit it, the shock of the impact jolting him back just enough for the blade to miss Jayden's head before becoming, from his perspective, apparently stuck in midair while Not-Lloyd yanked futilely at the weapon. _Change of plans. Nobody said a fucking thing about fucking swords_. He controlled his fall backwards into one that let him sprawl to his right, away from the suspended blade. _If I remember this right, the doorway should be right in front of me and to my left. I can make it. He's not gonna kill me in front of that crowd. Or if he does, fuck him, he's going down._ With his assailant still struggling, trying to wrench the sword loose from the invisible punching bag, Jayden scrambled forwards and up, starting to sprint, hands out in front to guide against mishaps. He aimed poorly.

When he hit the opposite wall with both hands, it felt like his mind had finally broken entirely. It was there/not-there/there/not-there: hard, but still invisible. _Oh shit, I can't even see the things I'm touching any more_. Nothing floated in front of his palms but more water. _Fishtank, moron, it's the fishtank_. _It's a glass wall, just like -_ He snapped his back towards the tank, his face turned again towards not-Lloyd, but his confusion had cost him: the big man's posture suggested he'd just thrown something, but Jayden had no idea what, or where.

_Should I –_

The wall behind him exploded, at the same time the chair appeared, striking Jayden's body, at the same time causing a blinding flower of pain to appear in the right side of his ribcage, blooming along towards his back. He'd gone _through_ the wall, into an ocean that was more ocean than the ocean, his back driven through the glass wall of the tank, and his brain gave up. He crumpled in a direction that was presumably downwards, gasping with bewilderment, his eyes unfocusing, landing on his right side.

_He's gonna kill you, asshole. He's gonna kill you. Get up._ He fumbled at the floor, his hands slipping. _It's wet. It's wet. You're underwater, of course it's wet_. Not-Lloyd moved towards him in two swift steps, and lifted his leg back for a kick. Jayden tensed himself just before it hit.

The foot caught him in his ribs so hard that it lifted him off the floor, and his consciousness exploded into confusion and pain. He barely registered the feeling of his back hitting the wall behind him. Gagging, he doubled over towards his knees, his hands weakly curling around his belly. _Can't – don't – what – _ He was blind with shock.

The explosion he heard told him he'd been shot, but he couldn't feel his body well enough to tell where. _I'm dying. I've just been killed. _His vision began to dim, and then Paige was shouting in his ear. Again.

"Breathe, Norman! Come on, please breathe!" _That_ was why his head was pounding. Air. He uncurled himself slightly, trying to give his aching ribs room to expand. They wouldn't. He choked, writhing. "Did he shoot you? Where?" His hands were being forced away from the ball of pain in his belly, and as he tried to protest, the first painful hiccough shook him. It gave him just enough breath to grunt.

"Oh, god, don't move. Don't move, just breathe." _Make up your fucking mind_. The next spasm jerked him, and hands were holding his face, firmly. A jarring rhythm began in his torso, as he felt his diaphragm jerk excruciatingly back into life. He let it take over his body, and as the air worked its way in, his vision began to clear. He reached up one hand to try to pull his head free from the uncomfortably viselike grip it was in. "Stay still. Norman, can you hear me?"

He tried futilely to nod, then managed, "Yuh."

"I need to get you out of this mess. I'm going to help you sit up. Don't put your hands down."

"Nuh," he said, clutching at his middle, but his torso was already being painfully lifted clear of the floor. He gripped her hard with one arm, himself with the other. His body screamed at him. Mercifully, she let him stay hunched over, her arms wrapped around him, while he continued to struggle with his breathing and the pain.

"Oh, my god," she whispered. "Did he kill Paco, or did you?" He shuddered.

Slowly, his lungs and his chest started speaking to each other again, and he let himself start to become aware of his surroundings. He shivered. He was wet, being awkwardly supported by the also-sitting Paige, on what looked, _thank Christ_, like a wet but relatively normal floor. _At least, I think it's her. Can't see her face, but that looks her shoulder with my drool all down it. _

"_Fuck_," he said.

She rubbed his back. "Norman, do you think you can make it to the sofa?"

"No." He couldn't quite bring himself to straighten up.

"We're sitting in the middle of a big pile of broken glass, is the thing. The fishtank broke open."

"Oh." He considered. "Okay, let's try."

Half of his muscles wouldn't respond – his abdominals were still trying to clench, and his legs were simply weak. But he did his best to cling to her as she half-lifted, half-dragged him to the sectional and let him lie down on his left side. He promptly curled up as much as the sofa would allow and wrapped his arms back around himself, while she sat on the floor next to him. He felt her hands, checking him over, plucking at his clothes. He stared at the cushion in front of his face.

"Did I get shot?" he asked, when he could make words again. "I heard a shot."

"I don't think so," she said. "I think you heard my gun. It's Paco's, really, but mine, now. I got back while Sheppard was stomping you to death."

"Is he dead? Did you kill him?"

"No," she said. "I missed. Hold still, you've got some little bits of glass in your face." He closed his eyes as her fingers began to pick at his cheek.

"You missed a guy built like a Sherman tank? Have you ever _held_ a gun before?"

Her fingers paused, then slowly resumed. "I guess if you feel good enough to be an asshole about it, you're probably not going to die. You didn't seem to be doing that well yourself. I missed him, and he came at me, threw me right up against the wall like I was a scarecrow. I thought that was pretty much going to be the end of it for me, but he took off running while I was still flat on my ass. I have no idea why. I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking. Oh, Jeez, your ear's kind of messed up from the glass. There's a lot of blood, but everything looks really shallow. I think you're going to be okay."

He shivered again, and opened his eyes as she pulled away. "Couldn't catch him?" She picked up his abandoned suit jacket and laid it over him.

"I didn't even really try. Let me see your hands. He was going like a freight train, and I sort of thought that if it came to a race between me and him, or between me and you dying, I'd rather try to win the second one." He flinched as she gently slipped a pebble of glass from beneath the tip of one of his right fingernails. "Do I _need_ to go call an ambulance? Norman? I can't tell how hurt you are."

"No," he said quickly. _She should have the ARI now. And the phone. And I've got a name, even if it's false. And there's got to be something that can help me in this room_. "He knocked the wind out of me, is mostly what it is. Kicked it out, really. I think I might have joined Ethan in the broken ribs club. Don't leave. Don't go anywhere."

She looked stricken, and he couldn't figure out why. "I'm so sorry about the hotel room," she said. _Oh. That_. "I'm sorry we left you there."

She'd become so focused on the glass on his body, in his clothing, that she seemed to have left the planet. _She needs to say it, Norman. Let her go_. _Not like you had anything more productive to do with your time right now.  
_

"We were both so scared when you lost it," she continued. "Ethan stayed to sit with you, and I went out to the ice machine to get something to put on your face, and there were just cops _everywhere_. They'd found us. I ran back in, and we sort of . . . took everything and ran like hell. I'm sorry about that, but you were _gone_. And I'm sorry I took your phone, I thought it was Ethan's, the important one. Believe me, I wished you had it after I could think again. I was sort of mixed up. We barely made it out of there, as it was. Ethan took off out the front door – oh my _god_, you should have seen him move – and I was sort of pounding on you, trying to wake you up. All hell broke loose when they saw him, and I grabbed everything off of you, threw it in the shoebox, and threw the box off the back porch. There's all these balconies out there that I climbed down, and I grabbed the box and ran to your car while they were all after him. I wasn't even a blip on their radar, I think." She reached for his other hand.

"Lucky," he said. "Look, give me the ARI."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "No. Not when you're like this." She wiped her face with her hand, and he realized the back of it was lacerated. _From picking you up, you moron. Ah, shit._

"Your hand," he said, stupidly.

"Yeah, I'll do myself in a minute." Her bare arms and face were streaked with smears of blood, and he wondered how much of it belonged to each of them. _There's got to be something from that big bastard in the room, too_.

"Look, I hurt my chest, not my head," he said. "The ARI won't make a difference. Sheppard's gone, and we need to figure something out."

"No way," she immediately responded. "Nuh-uh. Sit up by yourself, and then we'll talk about it." She tucked his left hand back underneath his makeshift covering.

He didn't have the focus to fight her. "How'd you both get here?"

"Disaster, just like we've done everything else." She began to delicately pick at her own palms, and let the silence hang between them for a bit. "When I peeled out of the parking lot, Ethan was still going, seriously, running on the roof, and every damn cop in the world was still after him. I thought maybe if I could just get away with all of the information, I could do something, find Shaun, figure _something _out. I told you, I've got my sources. I didn't know if you were . . . if they were going to arrest you, too. And then . . . Ethan went off the roof into the street. Right off the roof."

"Jesus. And he's not dead?" She sighed deeply. _He's not. But something's wrong._

"There was this sort of scaffolding thing that broke his fall a little, but, honestly, I'm not sure why he's not. I think it messed up his back pretty badly. I slammed on the brakes, leaned out, and just _screamed_ at him, he made it to the car, and all those cops were still on foot, and . . . we got away. Don't know if they got the plates, or not." She shrugged. "Guess I'm probably on their radar, now, though."

"Seems like a safe bet." She had finished now, and wrapped her hands around her ankles. Whatever she was looking at, it wasn't in the room.

"Ethan was totally panicking because you . . . whatever that was, it happened to you before you told us anything, and we didn't know where to go. I ended up having to pull over – I was so freaked I wasn't driving too well, anyway, and then, you're not going to believe this. We opened the box and got everything out, and the last figure was _gone_. There was your phone, and my keys, and your glasses, and everything else I threw in there, but no origami. It must have come out somewhere between the room and the car. That hurt Ethan more than the fall did. He looked like . . ." She shook her head, studying her hands.

Jayden opened his mouth, then shut it again. Her voice was trembling, but her body had gone very still.

"He just sort of went away. I don't know if it was one of his blackouts, maybe. He was shaking so hard I could hardly hold on to him, but there was nobody home."

"Is he . . . did he come back?" _Please let me not have destroyed this man_.

"Yeah. Sort of. I was pretty scared for a little bit, as scared as I was by you in the hotel, you creep. But after a while, he." She looked embarrassed. "He started to cry. I was so relieved when he started, because he was at least doing something, but it was the worst sound in the world. He was, he was _keening_, and it just went on and on and on. It was like listening to someone in hell." She shuddered, and Jayden couldn't bear to look at her face any more. He shut his eyes. _She thinks she's confessing her own guilt. She thinks she's telling me she wrecked everything by losing the rat_.

"I couldn't get through to him, and I finally actually just pushed that phone of his right up into his face. I almost put it in his _mouth_, I wanted to get him to stop so bad, and I told him that we still had part of an address, most of an address, we could still find Shaun, and I just kept saying it over and over, until he heard me. He was pretty destroyed at that point, but I just threw the GPS at him and he started messing with it, and the phone. Sort of passing out and coming back and trying to do the address. That's why I think his back is screwed up, he started having a lot of trouble with sitting up, but he wouldn't let me lie him down."

Jayden felt lightheaded, disassociated, and knew it had nothing to do with the pain in his body. _Oh Christ. Oh shit. You broke them both, Norman. You did that._

"So then I was trying to figure out where we should go and what I could do about it. I wasn't going to try to take that stuff away from him, and so I put on your glasses. I was pretty fucking scared of them, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I put them on, and just about jumped out of my skin when the car disappeared. Guess you know what I'm talking about. But I couldn't figure out how to do whatever it was you were doing, and then I got scared of what they might do to _me_, you know, and I stopped trying. All I could think of was the Blue Lagoon, and then . . ." she trailed off.

"You slutted your way in here," he said.

"Yes."_ Because she felt so guilty about losing the rat. Because she needs to take care of him the same way you need tripto. Because she had to sit there with him when he finally lost his goddamned mind. You should have just shot them both when you met them, Norman. It would have been much less painful for everyone involved. Could have ruined fewer lives._

He tensed his arms against the sofa, and, straining against the bracelet of pain in his torso, pushed himself up to lean against its back. He held carefully onto the lower edge of his angry ribcage. She hadn't moved, was still thoughtfully considering her bloody hands.

"Is that a decanter over there?" Jayden asked. "Get me a drink."

She shot him a doubtful look. "Are you sure you should?"

"No. Yes. Please. Maybe you should, too. Shouldn't. Should-shouldn't."

She shrugged, and the now-familiar gesture of her running her hands comfortingly up her arms covered them with a thin film of blood. She leaned forwards on her knees and grabbed the decanter, one glass, off the desk, placed them on the floor in front of her, and poured him a finger or so. She handed it up to him, and he realized as he took it that his hands and wrists were also speckled with small cuts. _I bet my face looks like Freddy Krueger's by now_. He shrugged, tossed down half the drink – _Jesus, you'd think the guy could afford better whiskey_ – and balanced it on his knee. It was painful to swallow it, but it was good pain, the kind of pain that reminded him he might keep living, instead of the kind in the rest of his body, the kind that kept insisting that he was going to have to die someday, and that might be soon. _Memento mori, asshole_.

"Madison," he said, "I have it."

"Have what?" She'd stretched out her legs, and was dislodging a few lingering shards of glass out of her jeans.

He reached, reluctantly, into his pocket, and showed her what had been the rat. It took her a long moment to comprehend.

"Oh. Oh! Oh my god, let's go! Can you walk, do you think?" She started to scramble to her feet.

"No," he said, and grabbed her shoulder. "It doesn't matter. It's . . . I wrecked it. I failed it. There's nothing there, any more."

She looked horrified, and he felt fresh guilt at having inadvertently given her false hope. "What happened?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter. It's over. But that's why I've got to have the ARI. Now. It's the only way to finish this."

Her eyes started flickering back and forth – the brown paper, his face. He could see her becoming convinced, as he'd hoped. "All right," she said. "You win."


	16. Chapter 16

Paige, it turned out, hadn't been willing to pry the phone out of Mars' hands, but she'd scribbled down the partial address on the back of the rental agreement she'd found in the glovebox of the Chevy. She had to go retrieve the paper, and the ARI glasses, and Jayden's cell phone, from the doorway where she'd dropped them when she'd lifted her gun.

"Are you sure?" she asked, handing him everything.

"Yeah." Jayden had been planning. "You're right, this could not work out. I'm pretty sure it will, but, you know, just in case." _And you are far, far less likely to fuck everything up if I give you a scheduled activity_. "I'm going to put the glasses on. You take my hand – my left hand. That's the one I can feel better, in the ARI. Every fifteen seconds, you squeeze. If I don't squeeze back, you get to take the glasses off. Two minutes, you take them off anyway, and then we'll renegotiate. Give me anything I ask for while I'm under. Make sense?"

She nodded, and he felt a secret pleasure at what he'd just done: talking her out of whether he should do it by means of creating a conversation about _how_ they should do it. _You still got it, Norman_. He worked his right hand back into the glove, and Paige slipped one of her hands into the grip of his left. He could feel her pulse beating through her palm, quick, anxious. _Calm down, it's gonna work._

He thought of where he needed to go, what he needed to do, pre-planning his route. Then he took a deep breath, nodded at Paige, and stepped into ARI. He flew like an arrow towards what he needed, his mind, his body all focused together into a dart, a bird, a comet.

_All right, let's get the first order of business out of the way, then have her hand over the phone. John Sheppard_. He threw the name into the mix, and, unexpectedly, his world lit up like Fenway Park. He could distantly feel his own back arching. _I I I am I I I having a stroke I I_

A hand clenched at his face. "No," he said, trying to deter it. "It's good. It's so good."

The lights were connecting all over. _Lesson learned_. It was like standing inside a firework, like hovering inside the sun. Lights lit lights lit lights all over his head, beneath his feet. He met John Sheppard, then Scott Sheppard, two children composed of strings of data that cumulated in the news story about the tragedy at Carnaby Square. He kept their solemn faces, lit by the brilliant glow of the exploding puzzle, guiltily in sight as he plunged into Social Services.

_Oh Christ that must have hurt. That death. Little John Sheppard, drowned._

Someone squeezed his hand. He bristled with frustration, squeezed back.

He could see the man now, the Scott Sheppard that had become the Scott Shelby that had become the Origami Killer. Set all those crazy mechanisms into motion. Let Mendez go, freed Neville, bled Baker of his scanty property, danced procedurally with Blake, forced Shaun into death, kicked Jayden in the ribs. _You've. Ruined. Everything_. There was so much pain in that cluster that Jayden could hardly breathe, again. He walked down galleries painted with Scott Sheppard's face, with John Sheppard's face, with Ann Sheppard's face, with Roger Sheppard's face, with Scott Shelby's face.

Another squeeze. He managed the return.

Shelby became the large body in his waking nightmare, the fight at the Blue Lagoon. Jayden's chest filled again, painfully. _There he is. There he fucking is. _He could see everything the man had ever done, every breath Shelby had taken, every life he'd intersected._ But Shaun Mars is still dead. Will be dead. Places. _Blinded, overwhelmed, he told himself to focus. _So much light everywhere. Where?_

He took the image of the man by both lapels and dashed him, hard, into the geolocator. _Where is he? Where is Shaun? _ Another network of light blossomed, and he snarled at it, told it to fit into the bird's nest he had around the square, the nest Shelby was being pummeled into, and he had it.

_Oh god oh god oh god there there there **there there**_

He met the location, flirted with it, had a love affair. He fell deeply, deeply into love. The only place, the special place, the place where Shaun Mars must be. The pleasure that exploded through his body was unprecedented, uncontrolled.

Someone was ripping away his pleasure, but his hands were too slow, incapacitated, to stop it. His glorious light became a tiled ceiling. _Oh Christ that was so good. So good._

"Are you okay?" Paige said. He turned his head towards her dreamily. _The ocean might be gone, but I'm still underwater_. She smacked his face lightly; he couldn't feel it, but he could see her hand. "Norman? Can you hear me?"

"Why did you let me stay in there so long?" he got his mouth to say.

"It was only about forty-five seconds, Norman. I timed it. Oh, oh god, what's wrong?"

_Forty-five - ? Shit on **toast**._ "I am high," he said, "As a fucking _kite_."

"What?"

"Do you only get so many of those? I can't remember."

"So many of what?"

"Endorphins. That's what they're called, right? I think I just used all of mine. Maybe some of yours. Holy_ shit._" The rush was already fading, the information beginning to settle down into categories.

"Dammit. Do you know where you are? Can you walk? I should probably just get you in the car." Paige tugged on one of his arms, started muttering to herself.

"Okay, it's okay. Under control. I've got it. 852 Theodore Roosevelt Road." He started to fumble with his legs, planning ahead.

"Are you sure you can make it? You still look pretty screwed up. I think I figured out where the back door is."

"Good girl." He jerked his huddled suit jacket off the seat beside him. The world was shining a little, but he was understanding it at ten thousand times its usual speed. "You should take my coat back."

"Norman, you're still shaking."

"And you're half-naked and covered in blood. I'm not saying you're colder, I'm saying you're more likely to get us arrested without it. Can't do much about my face, but we can do something about your arms. Unless you want Mendez' little number there, you should probably use mine."

". . . all right." He tensed his legs experimentally while she put it on. His brain's recognition of the pain had become a creeping shadow, but his body was still sulking, and the muscles in his thighs were apparently contemplating as to whether they wanted to tell him to fuck off.

He stood shakily and finally managed to spot his gun, exactly where he'd set it down before the fight, worked it back into its holster. He began doing another personal inventory, making sure he hadn't lost anything _else_ during the fight. His eyes scanned the room, quickly, automatically scanning for the evidence he no longer needed. _Just in case_. _Who keeps a punching bag in their office? Wannabe seventies porn stars, I guess_. Glancing across the desk, his eyes inadvertently met the glazed ones of the corpse of Doctor Adrian Baker, duct taped to the office chair.

"Norman? _Norman!_" He wasn't sure if it was her voice or the pain that brought him back to himself – she had caught him right around the low collar of his aching ribs, and he was already halfway to the floor. He jerked.

"Down for a sec," he mumbled, eyes squeezed shut, clutching at her, and she complied, letting him thump down onto his tailbone. "Ow."

She was cautiously helping him to stay sitting upright. "What is it?"

He held up an index finger in front of his face – _just a minute_ – took one, two deep breaths, then opened his eyes and looked back across the room.

Baker remained, slumped forward in death, still sporting the hole in his face that Jayden had put there. _Well, that's interesting. Now, I **know** that's not him, but I can't stop seeing it. And the rest of the room looks kind of okay. Spooky effect, though_.

Eyes still glazed over, Baker cocked his head, spread his mouth into a wide grin, and he gave Jayden a slow, lascivious wink. Jayden's entire field of vision promptly greyed out.

Hands were fumbling at his throat, and he put his own up to ward them off. His right hand was immediately grabbed, and squeezed.

"Norman, can you hear me? If you can hear me, squeeze my hand again." He did so. "Okay, can you talk to me? I can't help you if you don't talk."

_You can't help me, period. _"Thinking," he croaked.

_On my back. Well, that was probably inevitable. You're a great fuckin' FBI agent, Norman – if you think a suspect's dead and they move, fainting is probably the least productive thing you could do. Mendez, Baker – whatever, he's not going to hurt you._

_ Lloyd hurt you. Twice, now._

_ Well, Lloyd always has been a bit of an officious prick. And he was standing in for Blake and Sheppard, I just didn't know it._ His hand was again grasped hard, and he absentmindedly returned the pressure. _The thing in that chair, it's a corpse. A corpse is a corpse, of corpse, of corpse. Stop being such an idiot and just go get Shaun Mars._ He opened his eyes, looking up into worried brown ones.

"Was I out?" he asked. _You think, Sherlock?_

"Just for a few seconds, I think. But you still look pretty pale."

"Basement tan." _Thank you, thank you for not saying I look like I've seen a – _

"Is it pain? Are you in pain?" she pressed lightly at his ribs with her other hand, her face tense. "Or is it your head?"

"Ow. Don't do that." He ran his tongue around his teeth. "I think maybe I shouldn't have had that drink."

She relaxed slightly, as he'd hoped, and said, "Told you so. Do you want to try to get up again?"

"I think it'll be better if we get out of here," he said truthfully. "Give me something to focus on."

"Do you need to lean on me?"

"Well, let's start with that, and see how it goes."

It went pretty well. Baker regarded him balefully on their way out.

* * *

She was right about the exit over the catwalks, and that was a good thing. Jayden had never been very good with heights, so it was beneficial that he didn't have to say anything to Paige as she led him, his eyes closed. The car wasn't far, and as they reached it, Jayden felt a sort of exhausted relief at seeing Mars' pained, unconscious face through the windshield. He pulled himself free.

"Maybe," he said, steadying himself on the car, "we should wake him up when we get there."

"No, I want to tell him now." Paige's face was stoic, determined. "I don't want him to panic if he wakes up while we're driving." _Okay, that seems fair. _

Paige opened the passenger door, and slid herself in to perch on the very edge of the seat, supporting herself on the door frame. "Ethan?" she asked. "Ethan, it's going to be okay." She stroked his tear-streaked face and, as he began to stir, she leant forward and kissed him, softly, on the cheek. It was such a personal, such an intimate gesture of comfort that Jayden knew with a sudden, empty certainty that he'd never understand the level of desperation they'd reached together in the car after they'd fled the hotel. There was grief there, in his brain, and relief, and guilt, and sorrow, and a little jealousy sneaking underneath.

"Ethan?" Madison repeated. The lonely face came slowly to life, strained. Jayden dug into his own pocket, pulled out the crumpled brown square that had been the rat, and knelt down to press it into Mars' hand. Mars stared down at it, shocked, then back up into the agent's face.

"Ethan," Jayden said, "the trials are over. I'm sorry I scared you. We have the address. We're on our way to get Shaun, now. We're on our way."


	17. Chapter 17

Mars pulled the sad, crumpled square to his chest, and appeared to lose consciousness again. _Well, I guess that was kind of worth it. Maybe he at least won't die of an aneurysm before we get there._ Opening the rear door, Jayden let himself collapse into the seat, both arms around his ribcage. "You got the address?" he said. "Just go. Don't stop for anything. I mean, all right, don't get us pulled over, but go." Paige had barely closed the driver's side door before she floored it, and the car shot forwards like it had been fired from a cannon.

They hit a bump, hard, and Mars gave a juddering gasp.

"Oh, shit, Ethan, I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't slow down," Jayden commanded, leaning back from the pain that had flared up in his own ribs at the impact. "It's not gonna fix what's wrong with him." She stamped down hard on the gas again, guiltily.

They listened to the GPS directions in silence, only their breath filling the space of the car. Mars' and Jayden's exhalations both sounded strained; Paige sounded like she'd started to chant something under her breath, some sort of command to drive faster. _That's okay. I can go with that. _The drive to the warehouse, the empty grey space that Jayden could already see in his head, took both too long and no time at all. They screeched to a stop in front of what looked like an abandoned building, their bodies lurching forwards. _I know he's here. I know Shaun Mars is here_. "Okay," Jayden said, opening his door. "Come on, Madison, let's go get Shaun."

"What, without Ethan?" Paige looked wounded.

"Christ, look at him. We're gonna be lucky if we get _him_ back alive, never mind the kid."

"Norman –" her jaw was agape, staring into the back seat at him. "We have to. We _have_ to bring him in. He's come all this way. What if, what if Shaun is too scared to come with a stranger? What if there's something only Ethan can do?"

The car disappeared, abruptly, and Jayden was looking at a table, eye-to-eye with a glass vial of green liquid, monitors winking out all around him. _Fuck. All right, brain, I get it. You at least have to give it a shot, bringing him in_. He shook his head until Paige reappeared. She was already scrambling out of her door, and he followed suit, clutching his middle. The two of them converged on the front passenger's side door.

Jayden leaned in first, jerking at Mars' shoulder. "Okay, Ethan, we're here. Shaun is here. We're at the place where Shaun is. We're gonna help you get out."

Mars' eyes came open, bright, febrile. "Yes." He shifted unsteadily.

Jayden got his hands under the other man's knees and lifted, but as he began to pull them out, Mars' eyes started to roll up in his head. Jayden hastily let go. "Hey, no, pal, no. Come on, look at me." The other man came back with a visible effort. "Madison, this is not going to work. We gotta leave him."

"No," said Mars.

"I think it's his back," she said, running back to the driver's side. "He can't twist it. I think he'll be okay once he gets up. I'll help, just try to keep him straight."

With Paige reaching over to lift from the driver's side, the two of them managed to move Mars sideways on the seat and get his feet flat on the pavement. Mars seemed to gray out slightly, but came back again as Jayden leant in to hold him up.

"Work with me, Ethan," Jayden said, trying to ignore the flare of pain along his ribs. "We've got to get you out of the car."

"Yes," Mars said, and abruptly wrapped both arms around Jayden's shoulders. _Well, shit, okay. I didn't even think he could lift that one. Let's go with it_. Embracing Mars, he rose, hearing the other man's pain gasp past his ear. "Madison, get your ass over here. Now."

They again managed Mars' body through careful cooperation – he kept vaguely apologizing while they were readjusting him – and got him more or less balanced between them, an arm around each. _Don't know how we're going to open the fucking door, but that's a whole ten feet away. I guess we can worry about it if we get that far._ Jayden had one arm wrapped around Mars' back, his hand grasping the other man's belt on the left side, and he suddenly realized he could actually feel Mars' back spasming, the muscles twitching against his forearm. _Oh, Jesus, sorry, pal. We're almost done_.

Paige was panting. "Come on," she said. "Ethan, come on. We're going to save Shaun."

"Yes," said Mars. He began to lurch forward, jerking both his helpers into surprised movement.

Without being asked, Paige managed to shoot half her body forwards to open the industrial metal door. _Good girl_. They worked their way in, Jayden kicking at the door so it wouldn't close on them. As it squealed shut behind them, Jayden looked around the vast, grey interior of the warehouse they'd entered. _Okay, now what?_

A small, white hand shot up out of the floor, and Mars took off, running. He was gone so quickly that Jayden barely registered the arm leaving his shoulders, the loss of the belt out of his hand. _Holy mother of Christ, __**really**__? _Paige was stumbling forwards to Jayden's left, thrown off-balance by Mars' sudden departure. _This guy is fucking unbelievable._

In front of him, Mars had thrown himself to his knees, was struggling with a grate set into the floor. He was yelling.

"_**Shaun! Shaun!**__"_ He rattled the grating. "I'm going to get you out!"

Jayden broke into a staggering run, dimly aware that Paige was trying to rebalance herself and follow him. As he neared the grate, his brain broke into disparate sections – one concerned with the puzzle of opening the grate, the other shrinking away from what he was seeing. _A child shut into a well to drown. A drowning child. Who would ever? _The newspaper reports from John Sheppard's death flickered through his head. _No. Not even. Crazylogic. _Shaun's small face was white with exertion. _We're here, pal. We're trying_.

He could almost immediately see the problem – the grate was sealed by a padlock. _Was there some way to get the key? Was that the trial I fucked up? Shit_. Mars had thrown himself flat, thrust both arms through the grating, was holding Shaun up, yelling something at him. _I can just shoot the lock. Let's just shoot the lock_.

"Ethan!" Jayden yelled. "Move back!" _That's not gonna – nope. _He might as well have been yelling at the grating itself. Mars was pulling Shaun up through the water, towards himself, pressing him to the metal grid that separated them. "Madison, get him! Pull him away! I need to shoot the lock!"

She flashed by him, hitting Mars in a hard tackle, ripping apart the embrace he'd started with his son. _Good girl._ Mars screamed, Shaun flailed, Jayden shot. The lock flew apart. "Let him go let him go _let him go_."

She already had, was lifting the grating from behind. Mars scrambled around on all fours to the open side, and nearly pitched in headfirst as he grasped for the boy. Jayden reholstered his gun and ran forwards to help. The child's enormous green eyes filled his world as he reached down to help Mars draw him from the water. The two of them yanked hard, dragging Shaun out of the well and onto the concrete. Jayden let go as Shaun landed on the floor, staggering backwards.

Mars continued to hover on his knees, his hands wiping at the boy's face. "Shaun? Are you all right?" The boy nodded, solemnly. He looked exhausted. "It's all right now. It's okay. We're going to go home. I'm going to take you home. It's all over."

Jayden felt the tension begin to drain out of his body. Discomfited by witnessing the intimate moment between Mars and his son, he looked up and met Paige's eyes. She was still sprawled behind the well, gaping, terrified. _What – _Then, someone hit Jayden square in his left shoulder with a sledgehammer, and it knocked him off his feet. He fell clumsily onto his right side.

It took him a moment of agony on the floor to realize that he'd probably been shot. There had been a noise that would correspond with that. His whole left side wouldn't move at all. At all. He couldn't even roll over. His holstered gun was trapped underneath him.

He got his eyes open, and was met again by Shaun's wide green eyes. They were face to face, both curled up around their pain. Reality started to drift. _Jesus, kid, I'm sorry_. _We made it. You can see that we made it, right?_ There was shouting occurring around them, but Jayden couldn't look away from Shaun's frightened eyes. He began to fumble at his gun, poorly. He could only move his right arm, and he was lying on it. _Your dad loves you so much. I hope you never have to learn how much_. He managed to inch the Glock out of his holster.

Those wide eyes wouldn't let him drift off into the unconsciousness the pain was pushing him towards. _Scott Sheppard is somewhere in the room. He's here. He shot me_. He dragged the gun out onto the floor, drowning in Shaun Mars' eyes. _I have to get him. That's my job. I kill people. I shoot really well. I need to shoot Scott Sheppard in the head before he kills all of us_. Sheppard was yelling something about how it was wrong, about how Ethan was supposed to be the only one. It was hard to process.

_I'm sorry, kid. I'm sorry for everything. _Shaun sadly reached towards him, took his hand, his eyes not blinking. Jayden felt a moment of grace, of freedom, of forgiveness, as they touched. Then he realized what Shaun was doing. _No, kid, no. No._ His gun was dragged slowly out of his hand. _No. No. No. No. No. No. No. _And then everything was noise and pain and pain and pain and pain and –


	18. Chapter 18

He wasn't dead, but that was about all he could figure out. The parade of faces that appeared in front of him shocked him into confusion. There was his mother, and Lloyd, and Captain Perry, and Madison Paige, and Dwayne from the academy, and Carter Blake, and Nathaniel Williams, and Shaun. Always Shaun. He started pretending to be asleep when he saw any face he recognized; it wasn't that hard of a lie, and the strangers were almost always the ones bringing the important information. He fell asleep halfway through the information the white-coated stranger was giving him about his shoulder, but they woke him up and made him listen to it again. It wasn't good, but it explained why he couldn't move anything over there.

He worried a little about the ARI, about the tripto, about not having them. But he couldn't think well enough to worry very long. Everything was very far away, blurred. At one point, he woke up in the middle of the night, and Shaun Mars was sitting cross-legged on the foot of his bed, and that was when he knew the kid was dead. A ghost, like Baker. Those eyes were eating him, demanding reparations. _I fucked up so bad it'll never be right_. He was on the ground in the wet alleyway, on the floor in that blinding white room watching monitors blink out, on the floor in a sea of broken glass, on the floor with a bullet in his shoulder, on his bed with a child condemning him to hell. Digital orchids bloomed around him; Shaun pushed through them. Walls of translucent bricks formed around his bed; Shaun drifted through with his desperate eyes. Jayden knew none of it was real, but he couldn't stop seeing it, even when he was asleep.

He tried to apologize to everyone, every face he saw. They wouldn't let him, told him he didn't have to. _Someone has to forgive me. Someone, somewhere. Where's Ethan Mars? I don't want to see his face but I have to see his face. I'm so sorry_. They told him to go back to sleep, and he obeyed.

After a while, the parade slowed down, and he shuddered his way into distressed consciousness. The ceiling was very white.

"Hey, you," said Paige's voice. "It stopped raining. Kind of a nice day, actually."

He rolled his head towards her; she was half-perched on the inside window ledge of his hospital room, looking towards him cautiously. _Maybe she's even real_. "Shaun," he croaked. "Shaun Mars."

"He's okay," she said, and there was an edge of anxiety in her voice. "He's fine. Already went home with his mom." He closed his eyes in relief. "Do you understand me?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Good to hear it. Again, I think." _Can you be haunted by the living? Guess so_.

"How do you feel?" She moved slowly towards the bed.

Jayden considered. "Numb. Is this morphine? I've never had morphine before. This is some good shit." He tried to push himself upwards in bed with his one mobile arm, which slid uselessly over the sheets.

"No, don't move. There's a button thing somewhere. One sec." Paige rummaged over him, and pressed a plastic remote into his hand. He stared at it blankly for a second, and she looked doubtful. "You awake for real this time?"

He flinched at the question. _I don't know if I can be, any more_. "Hope so." He'd figured out what button to push, in any case, and the bed cranked slowly upwards. His heavy, immobilized left arm gave him a slightly canted posture.

"Oh, god, Norman, you look like a ghost."

"Shaun shot him, didn't he." Jayden said flatly. It wasn't a question. "Shaun shot the Origami Killer."

"Yes," she responded quietly. "Once. What do you remember?"

"Almost nothing," he said. "Not after. After I got shot."

She swallowed, looked out the window. "It was total chaos. I was panicking, Ethan was in shock, and the killer was shouting all of this crazy stuff at us, I don't think I even heard most of it. This little hole just . . . appeared, in the middle of the guy's chest. It was like it just came out of nowhere, the gun went off right in my ear and I couldn't even figure out what had happened for a second. Shaun looked as surprised as anyone. Terrified. Then Ethan reached over and grabbed the gun right out of his hand, and just started firing. Hit him a couple more times, and _then_ he went down. He was a big guy, you know, the killer. But Ethan got up and kept shooting. Walked over to him while the guy was on the ground, just kept pulling the trigger until it was out of bullets. Just went until it started clicking."

"Je_sus_," said Jayden, shocked. "That kid is _not_ gonna be okay."

Madison shook her head. "Afterwards, you were trying really hard to bleed to death, and I was trying not to let you _and_ to call an ambulance. Ethan dropped the gun and came back over. I was yelling at him to help me, but he just sat down, and picked up Shaun, sort of curled up around him, and Shaun fainted or went to sleep, or something. When the ambulance finally showed up, after they started taking care of you, they had to sedate him. Sedate Ethan, to get him to let go. I've been sort of bouncing back and forth between the two of you ever since. There's a ton of security, because everyone's still trying to figure out what the hell happened. I guess we are, too, trying to figure it out. I got special permission to see you because you and Ethan were sort of asking about me. I mean, neither of you have been making full sentences, but you at least said my name. Makes me feel special. What did they say about your shoulder?"

Jayden gave a half-shrug that was almost a shiver. "There's some nerve damage. A lot of 'wait and see.' Maybe I'll get everything back, maybe I won't."

She bit her lip in sympathy before hesitantly asking, "And the . . . other thing?" She glanced over her shoulder at the doorway. "How's your head?"

_How much do I lie to her? _The weight of the decision pressed on his chest, and Jayden was suddenly tired again. "Wait and see," he said, and, after a pause, she nodded. She looked miserable. "How are you doing, Ms. Madison Paige?"

She shrugged. "I'm still writing. Sort of a minor celebrity at the moment. All of us are, incidentally. I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping. You know, I go to bed, and I just keep . . . feeling the ropes holding me down, back in that basement." He couldn't read the small, tense smile on her face.

"I'm sorry," he replied. "I'm so sorry." He felt it was a woefully inadequate apology, and he floundered. "Ethan's still here, too?"

"He's," she started, and then took a deep breath. Her smile had disappeared. "He's still under some pretty heavy sedation. He keeps completely freaking out every time he wakes up, still thinks he has to go rescue Shaun. It's like he's stuck. I guess the first time, he clocked a doctor right in the face and made it halfway out the window of his room, hospital gown and everything, before they grabbed him again. I actually thought it was kind of funny when I heard that, you know. Like you said, it's a human thing. But then it turned out he didn't notice, or didn't care, that he'd cut his hand right down to the bone to break the window."

Jayden winced. The desolation in her voice was so deep that it seemed to have set off an answering chorus of pain in his shoulder.

"I've tried to talk to him, but he's so doped up, it's hard to get through. But then, when they let him wake up, they can't keep him from hurting himself. Even when he can't make a break for it, he's yanking his tubes out or something. I think they're going to try to let him heal a little more, and then take him . . . somewhere else. Where he can get some help. Everyone's kind of worried because you've been doing the same thing, asking about Shaun over and over. But you sound like you're done with it, so that's something."

Jayden was trying to dance around his exhaustion, his pain. "Where _is_ Shaun? Can't they just let Ethan spend some time with the kid?"

"That _woman_," and Jayden was startled by the sudden spite in her voice, "Won't bring him in. Shaun's mom. Says he's already having enough problems, and it would just be too much for him to handle right now, seeing his dad like that. Maybe she's right. I don't know."

_Oh, god, what a mess. _"I'd like to see him. Ethan. Talk to him."

"I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to go anywhere," she said. "Anyway, you're already asleep." She'd turned into Lloyd, and Lloyd was, as usual, correct. The morphine took him.

It began to let go again sometime that night. His shoulder was beginning to send dark twinges down into his body, his brain. He swallowed, his throat dry, and let the pain punish him. _No more than you deserve, you fuck-up. You didn't save anyone. Anything._

He was aware of the small, shadowed figure at the foot of the bed. _Oh, I don't want to see_. But he made himself keep his eyes open as Shaun Mars edged his way up towards the side of the mattress, running his small hands along the rails of the hospital bed.

Jayden put his good hand up to Shaun's face, and it slipped through it without resistance, as he'd known it would. "Why you?" he asked, but Shaun only jerked his head shyly, and stared. "Why not Baker, or Silver? You're still alive. I know I didn't do it right, I know that. I can't ever take back how bad I screwed up, kid."

His hand began to shake with the pain, and he pulled it back to his chest rather than watch it tremble against, tremble through, that still, solemn face. "I'll do anything. I _tried_ to do anything. How can I ever get you out of that well all right?" _He's Shaun and not-Shaun_.

Breathing was becoming agony, now. He tried holding his breath, but that just made the pounding in his head louder. _He can't answer you, Norman_. _Because you've never heard Shaun Mars' voice_. It was crazylogic, but it made a terrible sense. _In your head, Shaun never speaks. And he never blinks_. _Those eyes are going to be your fault forever, and so you have to look into them forever. You deserve the pain, after all, don't you? Isn't that why you're doing this?_

His whole body was one long throb, and the room shimmered in time with its pulses, but not-Shaun's sad face remained motionless.

"No, see, that's why his heart rate's way up." A nurse had appeared somewhere in the periphery. "Mr. Jayden? Can you talk to me?"

"Yeah," he forced out.

"Between one and ten, how much – "

"Ten. Big ten." _You're so weak, Norman_.

"Okay, we're changing your IV now. Just you hang on."

_You can't even do penance right, Norman. Not even that._


	19. Chapter 19

He wandered in and out of the world for a while after that. It was very hard to figure out the passage of time. _Fuckers took my watch on purpose, I bet. Me and Doc Baker, we're gonna storm this place, take the bastards down_. He knew he was fretting against the confines of his bed – just awake enough to mind the immobilization, just asleep enough to not be able to do anything else. Sometimes, not-Shaun came back. Sometimes, he didn't. Once, Captain Perry came, offered grudging congratulations. Jayden was sure he must be hallucinating _that_, until Perry started asking careful questions about just where Jayden's registered firearm had been recently. At that, Jayden pretended to go to sleep again, then _did_ go to sleep. When he woke up again, he realized guiltily that he hadn't said anything about Kinney. _Not sure if I should, anyway. Guess I might as well wait and see first how bad it's going to be once the other shoe drops. When they put it all together. When they take me off the morphine._

Jayden's bandaged left arm weighed on his chest like an albatross, like Mars' hand in the dress shirt sling he'd fastened him into. When Paige came back, his heart leapt.

"Where the fuck have you been?" he said.

"I . . . I spent like five hours here this morning," she said. "You should not try to treat other people like they're jerks when you're drugged up."

He hated her for being right, for using normal logic. "Ethan Mars still here? They transported him yet?"

"His psychiatrist – not a big fan of yours, by the way – is trying to get something put together. They're working through a bunch of red tape. Nobody's sure if they should still try to arrest him for something. He's here for a little bit more, I guess. He's pretty stable now, so they're trying to figure out how to ship him off."

"Gotta go talk to him."

"I . . . well, that's nice, you want to do that, but . . ."

"No, I'm going to." He started pushing down his sheets with his free hand. "Help me."

"There's security outside your room, Norman. I'm not exactly going to be sneaking you out of here."

"Then we're not going to sneak. Look, just back me up." He jabbed the call button in impatience and leant on it. A nurse appeared.

"Yes?"

"I need to go visit another patient. Ethan Mars. Incredibly important FBI matter."

"I don't think I can permit that, Mr. Jayden. I can see on your chart that – "

"Look," his eyes fell to her name tag, "Linda. If I don't get this done, the killings might not be over. The, the long nightmare of the Origami Killer might go on."

Linda looked startled. _Come on come on come on_. "Right," said Madison, stammering. "He's right." _Good girl_.

"I thought – " the nurse started.

"I know. They can't say everything on the news, you understand? This is confidential, and high priority. I'm not asking for much. All I need is a wheelchair, and for Ms. Paige here to accompany me to Mr. Mars' room. Ten minutes, tops."

"Oh, I don't know. You really sh-"

"Linda," he said, officiously. "You need to let me. You'd be doing what you're supposed to do: _saving a life_."

She looked floored. "All right," she said, finally. "I'll be right back." She wheeled around, and trotted out of the room. _You still got it, Norman. She hardly even finished a sentence_.

"You," hissed Madison in his ear, "Are _crazy_."

"Like a fox," he murmured back. _A fox who hallucinates a lot_. "Don't peek at my ass when I get up."

Cooperating while they maneuvered him and the IV into the wheelchair took just about all the effort he could spare. By the time they'd gotten him settled, he was ready to fall asleep again, and trying not to show it. Gripping the IV pole firmly gave him something to concentrate on. "Let's roll," he said, "You drive."

She maneuvered him quickly down the hallway while he forced his fuzzy mind into action. _What does he need? What does Mars' crazylogic look like, now? _

Paige was squeezing his hand, which had fallen off the IV pole somehow, and they were in an elevator. "Norman?" She was behind him, her voice in his ear.

"Mm?"

"I was saying I don't know how awake he'll be, but now I'm not too sure about you."

_You and me both. You and me and_ "Let's just get there, and then we can worry about it."

"Okay. Come on, grab your drugs."

"Always."

He could tell that Paige was up and running on the adrenaline from their maneuver; she worked her way past the guard in front of Mars' room almost effortlessly. _That's good. I'm not even sure where the fuck I am._ She mentioned his name for some reason, and he waved wearily at the guard, trying to look official. When she wheeled him into the room, he felt his guts twist, despite the numbness. _Oh, shit._ Mars' body was fragile-looking, heavily bandaged, soft cuffs holding his hands in place.

"Mr. Mars," he said. "Ethan." The slack face turned unsteadily towards him. _Okay, step one_. "It's Agent Jayden. Norman Jayden. Do you understand me?"

Mars stared silently.

"I was helping you get Shaun. Norman Jayden, helping you get Shaun. We got him. He was in trouble, but we got him."

Nothing. Mars' eyes were empty.

"I have the last origami figure, Ethan. The rat? I have the rat. It's okay. We can use it. We're going to read what's on the rat, and then we can go. You can read it. I won't even look."

Mars was staring at the ceiling again. He jerked slightly against the cuffs.

"I've been trying," Paige said quietly. "I've been trying all that. I tried everything I said in the car, the last time I saw him this bad, but he's just . . . I don't know."

Jayden felt his body start to give up on consciousness. _If I can't talk to him, if I can't talk him into believing he's okay, what do I have? What do I have when I can't talk to someone's crazylogic? I've got nothing_. His mouth twisted down at the corners, and he heard the soft squeak of tennis shoes behind him. _Oh, no. Oh no, not now_.

Shaun Mars shuffled into his peripheral vision, grasping at the railing by the foot of Mars' bed. _That's not Shaun. Not-Shaun. _Jayden tried to focus on the room, to make not-Shaun invisible again, but his strength was failing. _Useless._ _You're useless, Norman_. Not-Shaun started to slowly grope his way up the bed, just as he'd done for Jayden.

Jayden forced himself to look away, to look back at Mars' desolate face. His heart nearly stopped, and he felt himself start to black out at what he saw there.

"Norman? Norman, come on. I'm going to take you back to your room." She was gripping his hand again. He shook his head, forcing himself back into consciousness.

"No," he managed.

Mars was staring at not-Shaun, tracking the boy's progress up the bed with his eyes. _That doesn't make any sense. He's not there. There's no one there. Mars can't see him. It's not even him. You're being stupid. You're losing it_.

Not-Shaun made it to the head of Mars' bed, and shyly reached for the man's face. Mars was staring at him, captivated. Not-Shaun stopped before he touched it. _He can't touch it because he's not real. He's not even there_.

"It's okay, dad," said not-Shaun. "I'm all right. Thank you."

Mars smiled. He beamed. Jayden had never seen him happy before; the transformation was startling, miraculous. Mars' face was beatific, satisfied. "All right," he said. "Love you." Mars' eyes closed, and he appeared to fall asleep. Not-Shaun began to fade.

"Holy shit," Paige said. "What did you just _do?_"

_I didn't do anything. He did_. _Mars did._ Jayden was drowsy, confused, but his mind was forcefully putting the pieces together, a lifetime of habit taking over. _Highly sensitive to pain around him, to other people hurting. A data error I can't explain_. And then, Jayden knew. He could almost see it, hear it, the tiny voice that had called Mars back to Carnaby Square, over and over. The ghost that had wailed until it wrecked Mars' heart. The Origami Killer's ghost, the one that lived in the killer's head. The chorus of dying children that had hurt Mars so badly to hear that he had to block out that part of his brain, give himself up to walk, suffering, back to Carnaby Square while they drowned, over and over. He'd never been the killer, but Mars had felt how badly that distant maniac was hurting, the two of them linked by the corpses they always carried with them. And now, Mars had seen Jayden's, his haunting, his pain.

Not-Shaun was gone again. Jayden's chest hitched, and he didn't have the energy to _not_ start crying.

"Hey," she said, and she smoothed his face in her palm. "Hey, no. That was amazing. You're okay. Shhhh. C'mon, they're not gonna let you get up again."

Both her arms were around him now, awkwardly circumnavigating his bandages, and he wondered if he'd ever get his mind back, entirely, if he'd ever get that arm back. And if he was too crippled and crazy to work any more, if maybe that was okay, because it might mean he'd never have to shoot anyone, ever again. If maybe Madison would find someone to hold _her_, for good, to keep that dreadful basement at bay. If Ethan would find himself, be able to figure out how to be a father again without terror, without that bottomless, gnawing guilt. _If Shaun . . ._

"Norman," she said, "It'll be all right." She wiped again at his tears.

"I don't know," he choked aloud, answering himself, answering her. "But this is enough, right now."

"Okay. It's okay. You're wearing yourself out. Let it be enough."

"You, and me," he said, knowing he could never explain, "You and me and Ethan, and all our ghosts."

* * *

**Author's super-long note:** Well, that was . . . cathartic. Yeah, I know, I ended up slicing out a lot of stuff – Mad Jack, Ethan's arrest, Ann Sheppard, Scott's apartment, sex, etc. Some of this was because of the plot logistics I ended up writing myself into, some of it was because this was already _so stinkin' long_, and some of it was because that conversation with Ann Sheppard was maybe my least favorite part of the game. And yes, Lloyd got named Lloyd because he looks almost exactly like Jack Nicholson's imaginary bartender in _The Shining_; I think that's actually intentional on the game's part.

These poor people. In my hands, Norman Jayden became a manic huckster (he's got a bridge to sell you), Madison Paige a plot explication device (I'm sorry, _what_ happened when Norman wasn't in the room?), and Ethan Mars an increasingly schizophrenic punching bag of pain. I have guilt about this. The biggest thing that gives me pause, though, is the ending.

I still don't feel great about it. Here's what happened: I played Fahrenheit, the other narrative game David Cage wrote, and discovered that the guy has some very, very weird bees in his bonnet. The thematic elements that run through both games are just so strange. I'm not talking about the fact that they both have police procedural sequences (those make sense), but things like: phobias, self-harm, bandaged protagonists, children in danger, brothers, flashbacks, homicidal weather, hallucinations, crazy old ladies who hold the solution, vaguely racist portrayals of black men, and sex scenes that make very little narrative sense (though Fahrenheit is much worse in this last regard). And _because_ there's so much in common between the two games, and because Fahrenheit is all about insane psychic warfare, I think that Cage intended for the reason behind Ethan's blackouts to be a supernatural one. That what happened is that Ethan's car accident tuned him into some sort of psychic wavelength with Shelby that keeps drawing him to Carnaby Square every time Shelby loses his shit and needs to kill a kid.

Now, I'm not saying this is the best explanation, or a fulfilling one, or even a very good one; I'm just convinced that it's what Cage intended, because _Cage is fucking crazy_. I think it even feels like a vague betrayal of the game overall to just say, "Oh, well, Ethan's blackouts are so improbably coincidental because he has a magic brain," and I'm not really sure if there's a way to write it so it doesn't sound completely stupid. ("Wicked retahded," as Norman Jayden might say in the salad days of his Boston youth.) And if I'd known I was going to just give in and write it into the ending here (I had almost no forethought when I started beyond like chapter five), I think I would have done some things much differently early on.

So, as a confession, I got _ridiculously fucking lucky_ in making it sort of fit together at the end, in that I'd accidentally written stuff I could use to point towards this conclusion: Norman's "crazylogic," Madison's early description of Ethan's sensitivity, even the title. I think it kind of worked, even if it got super, super angsty. _Cry, Norman, cry!_ _I love the sweet taste of your tears!_


End file.
